The Staros Report is sort of a Factsheet 5 for comics. More resource guide than fanzine, it offers something of use for just about anyone with an interest in the comics artform. Staros includes comprehensive mailing lists of comic book publishers, mail-order retailers, selected comic book creators, magazines & fanzines, distributors, and printers (whew!).

Each issue also features meticulously compiled bibliographies for a few creators each issue. This issue includes Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Eddie Campbell. Campbell is the cover subject, and is featured in a lengthy, Journal-esque interview conducted by Staros.

The Staros Report only comes out once a year, and unlike most publications in the comics industry, the length between each seems entirely warranted. It must have taken months alone to compile this issue’s Love & Rockets character index, in which Staros thoroughly lists every character that has appeared in Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s 50 issues - all 250 of them! Staros’ list is invaluable to any dedicated Love & Rockets fan, and puts to shame the “Who’s Who in Love & Rockets” list that Fantagraphics compiled and printed in the Ten Years of Love & Rockets comic a few years back.

Anchoring every issue of The Staros Report is Staros’ list of “The Best Comic Books & Graphic Novels.” Featuring 121 entries, Staros does as good a job as any at compiling some sort of canon of the best existing efforts in the field. Although you will probably find yourself disagreeing with many of his picks (I would take out a few mainstream titles like Maximortal, Miracleman, The Crow, Dark Knight, et. al. and replace them with works by Kurtzman, Shelton, Kirby, McKay admittedly, part of the fun is taking issue with Staros’ choices), you will just as likely be turned on to a book you haven’t seen.

The Staros Report also offers a few essays and various comic strips, and as a whole makes a useful companion to magazines like The Comics Journal and Factsheet 5, as well as catalogs like Last Gasp, Fantagraphics, and Wow Cool’s.

About the last thing the world needs is another whiny, angst-filled generation-X lament. Nonetheless, I could not help but laugh out loud at Brad Yung’s mini-comic Stay As You Are, which is exactly that. The first issue collects his six-panel one-page strips which originally appeared somewhere in cyberspace. These strips generally depict pop-cultural reference-filled conversations between Brad and other jaded young consumer society citizens, along with a few childhood anecdotes and “Non Sequitur Theatre” strips which offer the comic-strip equivalent of channel-surfing.

Self-consciously hip and cynical, Stay As You Are is an idiosyncratic look at modern values and attitudes. None of this is unique or new, but in this case it’s very well done. One thing saves it from the recycling bin a lot of the mini-comics I check out end up in: wit. These forty photocopied pages display more wit than Douglas Coupland has managed to show in five books so far. Yung’s observations are self-deprecating, clever and occasionally even insightful, but his real strengths are the considerable ingenuity and comic timing he brings to bear upon them. If none of this convinces you, check it out anyway; it’s not like the $2 is going to make much difference in the spiritual vaccuum of your already mortgaged future.

The plot concerns a vagabond who is searching for a long lost friend known as “the Reverend.” There is no title, no introductory voice-over, the story simply begins. The panels are divided only by single ruled lines. The format is as sparse as the main character’s hobo lifestyle. No glossy cover, no letters page, no ads. The tellng of the tale is of primary importance.

The creator is listed as only “Sirk.” To my knowledge, this is Sirk’s debut comic book. A debut this strong can only indicate that Sirk will be among the leading comics visionaries of the next few decades. Storeyville gives me new hope for the medium.

The latest flavor of the month is proof that the fanboy cognoscenti (and let’s not be sexist: fangirl cognoscenti) are desperate to validate anything that doesn’t look like a superhero or movie tie-in as a mature use of the comics medium. The critical success of Stray Bullets is a testament to the immature judgment that dominates the field. It’s got the facile slickness and accessibility combined with arty pretentiousness that are guaranteed to pull the wool over your average, gullible comics hipster. Moreover, it’s got the advantage of being favorably compared to swill like Plasm, for which the artist, David Lapham, was previously known. It is, in fact, nothing more or less than a modest, competently executed, middle-of-the-road genre entertainment, and as artless and unoriginal as that sounds.

The glib, trendy callousness of the characters in Stray Bullets is positively Tarantinoesque; the dialogue is banal, the situations cliched, the staging derivative (the opening of #3 is stolen — excuse me, an homage — from Reservoir Dogs, and the story indulges in the cretinous fantasy of the protagonist running off with a wild femme fatale on the spur of the moment: “Run away with me, Led. Tonight… right now! …Let’s just go and never come back.”)

There is also an abused children motif that gives it an ersatz humanity and each issue includes the obligatory self-publishers letters column that amounts to a drool fest congratulating the artist on his courage and genius.

If your idea of art is a television movie of the week, you’ll be thrilled to learn that comics have finally achieved that height of human striving with Stray Bullets.

Judging from issue #15, TripWire has very little to offer in the way of serious comics criticism: the reviews range from short synopses with quick criticisms to longer, less intelligible pieces which evoke memories of high school (“Fax From Sarajevo shows that we cannot blindly put faith in those who are supposed to be in control — we have to rely on ourselves and make our own judgments on what is the truth.”). The reviewers’ hearts are in the right place — they slag nearly all the Marvel, DC and Acclaim books, and are unhesitant about criticizing a work by Fabian Nicieza, the issue’s interview subject — but one would imagine that in the fifth year of TripWire’s publication, they would have tired of the shtick and moved on to greener pastures (i.e., better comics).

The editorials are equally flat, and one in particular — an incoherent trashing of Alan Moore’s Watchmen — made me cringe with its every leap of logic and demonstration of its writer’s general ignorance. “... what you think of when you think of Watchmen is the Smiley button with a splash of blood on it,” is that piece’s most cogent assertion.

The aforementioned Fabian Nicieza interview is not even worth the 18 words it took to write this sentence. And given the size of the magazine and the frequency of its publication, the bad editing — more spelling errors than expected, uniformly bad grammar, and frequently clumsy prose — is at best surprising and at worst unforgivable.

Visually, TripWire #15 is a mixed bag. The art director, Michael Grover, has a good sense of design which makes for some interesting layouts, especially in the music section, which, incidentally, contains some smart-looking illustrations of British pop stars by Phil Wagstaff. On the other hand, Grover uses too many fades and has seemingly never been taught how to work with grayscale images — they are all horribly bitmapped and muddy — and the publication comes across as little more than a nicely-designed ’zine as a result. If the editors want to pass off their publication as a “real” magazine, these aspects, as well as the eyesore of a cover, need to be improved considerably; as long as they’re shelling out the money for good quality paper, they may as well make the best possible use of it.

Despite its numerous shortcomings, TripWire #15 is not without certain appealing elements. Some Journal readers might find the one-page preview of The Invisibles Volume Two #1 of interest, as well as the three pages of previously-unpublished Mike Parobeck Foot Soldiers art. And Anglophiles will enjoy the unfamiliar British colloquialisms, “ponce,” “twee,” and “cadge the odd pint” among them. Indeed, anyone curious about the English’s opinion of their native talent and our own comics industry will find odd bits of TripWire interesting. For instance, contrary to what I had always believed, Britons are not all moony-eyed devotees of Neil Gaiman. In fact, judging from this issue’s editorial content, some consider him a bit of a sellout. Consider this passage from editor-in-chief Joel Meadows’ review of Neverwhere, a television show written and co-created by Gaiman: “Gaiman’s ego, ever since Sandman hit it’s [sic] peak of popularity several years ago, has been spiralling out of control. It’s because he has surrounded himself with yes men and women that this self-indulgent, flaccid waste of tape has even been made.” Meadows is considerably more supportive of Grant Morrison, though, and even goes so far as to lay the blame for the low sales of The Invisibles Volume One at the feet of “our American cousins [who] didn’t take too kindly to chopping and changing artists every two seconds.”

Is TripWire worth your hard-earned $2.50? Definitely not every issue, and never if you have no time for comics criticism that is predominantly about the superhero genre. If, however, you are in the mood for bizarre British lingo, a foreign viewpoint of the comics medium, focused coverage of such creators as Frank Quitely and Steve Yeowell, and the continual berating of Neil Gaiman, then it couldn’t hurt to pick up the occasional issue, provided you can find it.

This is a an attractively heavy-stock covered mini-comic done in the style of a flip-over book. One half is done by Frederiksen, the other by Thompson, and the two artists meet in a similarly-designed middle spread.

Frederiksen’s work is a mixed-bag. The first of two features, “New Babylon,” is almost formulaic work, and reads like a series of one-page features for an aborted weekly cartoon. The second strip, “Cornhead Crapboy,” is much more entertaining, although it’s essentially a one-line joke that is two pages in the telling.

It’s Thompson’s work that moves this mini into the “check it out” category. He provides three comics here: an opening surreal short, an animal-fable called “A Time For Everything,” and a grumpy two-pager titled “Ronny Short.” Thompson’s drawing is lovely, reminiscent of the best recent work of Dave Cooper and Jay Stephens. The stories are well-told and display the artist’s comfort with the medium: two or three conversation scenes in “A Time For Everything” and a switch from sequential to graphic narrative by having the character walk through a house at the end of “Ronny Short” are really noteworthy. Both strips were so accomplished they made me ponder which is scarier: that I’m the only one who hasn’t heard of this guy or the only one who has.

The late ’70s and early ’80s were a fertile time for French underground comics. While French punk music failed to make much of a mark (except for Plastic Bertrand), French punk comics were absolutely incredible. The Bazooka Group (including Kiki Picasso and Olivia Clavel), the partners Bruno Richard and Pascal Doury, Placid et Muzo, and a few token foreigners like Savage Pencil and Gary Panter electrified the readers who discovered their work and were able to read it with open minds. These comics were a much-needed reaction to the ultra-slick, somewhat hippie-ish comics typified by the work of Moebius.

Very little of this work has been seen in the United States. A few pieces were published in RAW and in the great Canadian comic Casual Casual. Occasionally one of these artists will do a small illustration in The New Yorker (for instance, an illustration for the revival of Boxcar Bertha by Romain Slocombe), where Françoise Mouly is the art director. It is truly a shame that this work has been so little seen in America.

Un Regard Moderne helps correct this deficiency. Eighty artists from this school of French punk comix have work reproduced in this small book. Un Regard Moderne is the catalog for a show of this art at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Unfortunately, therefore, it doesn’t reproduce whole stories, nor does it translate the pages it reproduces. The narrative aspect of these comics is absent, but we do get a good look at the art, and it’s truly fascinating. (Also, it should be mentioned that the introduction, though brief, is extremely informative, and the design is fantastic.)

But Un Regard Moderne is frustrating. A book like this is a clarion for some adventurous publisher to put together an anthology of this work to read. If American readers can handle Henriette Valium, Jeff Johnson, and Dave Cooper, they can certainly handle the Bazooka Gang or Pascal Doury. Such an anthology would be an important addition to the still fairly small number of significant foreign comics translated to English.

Windfall is an excellent two-part installment of Pekar’s continuing American Splendor, put out by Dark Horse Comics in September and October of last year. It focuses on a part of Harvey’s life (November ’93 — May ’94) right after the dark and painful period covered in his critically acclaimed graphic novel, Our Cancer Year.

I was relieved to find our man approaching improved health and in remission after aggressive chemotherapy, and, thankfully for American Splendor fans, with a restored sense of humor. If Windfall continued the relentless sadness and depression of Our Cancer Year — which I loved — I may not have been able to handle it. But instead, I found myself laughing out loud, mostly at the expense of poor Joyce Brabner. I sometimes wonder how long it will be before Harvey finally succeeds in driving his wife nuts.

Let’s see, it starts with Pekar being a neurotic, royal pain in the ass at the airport (airports do that to some people), testing Joyce’s patience (she passes). Next he insists on driving with a bad hip on a solo roadtrip in a snowstorm, resulting in the car accident Joyce all but predicted. She handles it in a deadpan manner, but I wouldn’t call it humor. In our next adventure, Harvey agonizes over lost papers, resulting in Joyce being woken up several times from peaceful slumber, finally to let him in from being locked out in the pouring rain, after losing his key while looking in the garbage for the lost papers in question, which were safely in the house in the first place. Oh, and then Harvey wrecks the car again. Poor Joyce. And to top it all off, I still get the idea that Mr. Pekar is painting a pretty picture of himself. Welcome back, Harv.

Despite its flaws, The World of Edward Gorey is a thoroughly worthwhile book for both die-hard aficionados of the famed illustrator and those who find his work obtuse and impenetrable. The first section of the book is an interview of Gorey by Ross, which, considering Gorey’s reputation as reclusive and unapproachable, could by itself be reason enough to check out The World of Edward Gorey. Although the interview is far too brief in both length and scope, it’s certainly the best I’ve seen (the only other one I’ve come across ran in a magazine called Purr), and gives a good deal of insight into Gorey’s tastes and influences.

Wilkin provides a thoughtful and long-overdue examination of Gorey’s work — sometimes with remarkably perceptive results — that tries to account for Gorey’s career as a whole, including his work in theater set and book design. She also attempts to look at Gorey in a variety of contexts, and while some of the connections — such as with the painter Paul Klee — come off as a bit forced, it’s a provocative essay nonetheless.

Of course, the best contribution to this book comes from Gorey himself. In addition to numerous excerpts from Gorey’s strips and narratives, The World of Edward Gorey is chock full of preliminary sketches, illustrations, posters and designs that you probably won’t be able to find anywhere else. And while the best introduction to Gorey remains the three Amphigorey collections, the subtlety of Gorey’s work sometimes requires a friend or a guide to point things out. This well-designed tome does just that. While the three elements — interview, essay, art — making up The World of Edward Gorey might be unsatisfying on their own, as a whole they gel suitably to form a book the likes of which I’ve never seen before — and if you know of a comparable effort at spotlighting Gorey, I’d like to hear about it. Although it’s a dicey proposition at 30 smackeroos, this book fills a void.

If you’re a big Sasa Rakezic fan, for example, you probably already have Life Under Sanctions (published by Fantagraphics). But do you have Alas #s 1-3, Rakezic’s mini-comics published during the Serb-Croat war in 1991? Wow Cool does. Maybe you ordered Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics; did you get his Five Little Comics from Wow Cool? You know where to get Jim Woodring’s JIM, now guess where you can find three of his mini-comics.

You get the picture, so order the catalog already. As the catalog states, “Be true to your obsessions.” At the very least, understand that you’re merely a victim a psychological slavery, which should ease the guilt a bit when you’re reading the latest issue of R2D2 is an Indie Rocker.

The first four issues of this mini-comics gem were a shining example of what can be accomplished with an enormous amount of creativity in the face of limited resources, and this fifth installment continues the tradition. Far from being a masterpiece in the “high art” sense, Xeno’s Arrow is noteworthy for its engaging and entertaining tale about a breakout at the Lizard’s Intergalactic Zoo of Civilization by some of the beings on display.

Beettam and Geigen-Miller sidestep the usual pitfalls of the science-fiction and anthropomorphic genres — excessive attention to detail, obscene amounts of fictional history, blatant Sim rip-offs, etc. — with writing that is light-hearted, humorous, and, most importantly, genuine. Beettam’s art is technically sound at the worst of times, slick eye-candy at all others, and his layouts are intense and creative. Perhaps more importantly, he knows how to make his drawings work to the strengths of the story which makes for some interesting narrative effects and snappy, Indiana Jones-type action sequences.

The frenetic energy of Arrow seems, at times, too much for the mini-comics page to handle. Look for it to make the jump to standard comics format sometime in the near future, when you will undoubtedly be cajoled into buying it, or pick it up now and be one of the first on the bandwagon.

Young Bug chronicles the friendship of an overweight, unpopular teenager named Layla and a giant ant named Bug, who lives in a nearby ant colony, where he makes his living as a photographer. The story is told by her younger sister Rena, who gets drawn into the relationship and begins to accompany Layla on her excursions with Bug. (Actually, Rena’s first-person captions vanish almost entirely after the first two pages, and several sequences don’t involve her at all — she’s not even shown on the cover — but she’s clearly the protagonist.) Although the story is a fable about two girls venturing into a (very) different culture, writer/artist Michael Daedalus Kenny maintains an admirably matter-of-fact tone when dealing with the more fantastic aspects of the story; this helps him avoid the pitfalls of obvious metaphor mongering and allows him to focus on character and incident. (It also gives an unnerving anything-can-happen feel to the book.)

Artistically, Kenny seems to draw considerable inspiration from Paul Pope’s supple compositions and gracefully stylized figures. Pope is a hard act to follow, though, and Kenney’s drawing is often clumsy and sometimes lazy, especially on such tough-to-crack items as cars.

Still, he draws a fine ant, and his rendition of Rena, with her skinny legs and headful of gravity-defying black hair, is confident and appealing. Terrible panels alternate with ones that are downright inspired — the sure sign of a maturing talent.

The next-issue blurb warns that in issue #2 “things turn horrific,” and the story itself is billed as “a cautionary tale.” Unless the story collapses under the weight of this shift in tone, Young Bug will be one of the more inspiring debuts of the year.

Parodies of superhero material and the industry surrounding it aren’t new, but Griffith’s is dead-on, from the phallic “dingdong-o-matic” on the cover to the efficient skewering of the genre in one-liner’s like Zippy’s “Even Captain America has cleavage!” Griffith knows the material cold: who but a dedicated comics watcher could make references to Ivan Brunetti and Gerard Jones? The rest of the book is just as solid, including a couple of smaller extended sequences, one or two self-contained satirical slams, and a few semi-autobiographical strips.