Myspace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 4

by a lot of people

My thoughts on this volume of Dark Horse's on-line comic collection are basically no different from my thoughts on the previous three.  Dark Horse is putting together a very mixed bag with this series, and while I appreciate diversity in story content and art, I don't like it when there is a lot of diversity in quality.

There are some very good short comics in this book, but there are a lot of plain old mediocre ones too.  The mix is about 50/50.  As I prefer to accentuate the positive, I should talk about what I like.

I think my favourite story in this book David Malki's 'The Catch!: A Wondermark Tale.'  I think there may have been a Wondermark story or two in previous volumes, but they didn't catch my notice the way this very funny story about a Victorian man who brings home an early computer to helps him find things, only to discover that it's part of an ingenious marketing ploy.  The story is funny enough on its own, but when you start to accept the weirdness of people dressed in Victorian clothing talking about their TV remote, the story takes on a new level of enjoyment.  Very cool stuff.

I also loved the Achewood story, and really liked Matt Kindt's Giant Man piece.  There are stories that didn't do much for me but that had some very pretty art, contributed by people like Farel Dalrymple, Jim Rugg, and Kristian Donaldson.

As usual, most of the licensed stories (Star Wars, Buffy) were weak, and the stories that were effectively trailers for minis (like The Rapture) were pretty ineffective.  I keep holding out hope for more, but am increasingly disappointed.  I am now in the market for some of the Wondermark books though...