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Psycho Shit Fuck, Jose G. Angeles

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Totally hilarious, and insane. This book is 249 pages of short vignettes that follow a maddening formula.  Morbid Angel and Napalm Death blast out of each unruled panel.  It seems Troma Films, Wes Craven and that Steroid infused era of Hollywood starring Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger have been tossed into a short circuiting blender.  Frenetic, poorly drawn sex and violence leap off the carved surface of an 8th-grader's desk interspersed with social commentary and philosophical rants that slap normalcy, maturity and reservation in the face.  Admittedly, I can't leave the thing lying out in my room because it looks like a maggot infested stain on the floor.  Jose Angeles appears at Bay Area comic book events with a table covered in paper-mache' gore, advertising his own personal brand of 80's hesher freakout art.  He hails from the seldom mentioned South San Francisco district.  One story implies he is a janitor where piles of prostitutes' condoms and d
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  Paul Pope Vertigo , 2002       From slightly off the beaten path, yet still a conventional action oriented comic, Vertigo brought us Paul Pope's 100%; a book which envisions a gritty, futuristic urban stage for a drama which gives obvious nods to Bladerunner and the 5th Element, trading away some of the violence for romance and emotional expression.             Most striking is Paul Pope's inking style.  In the liner notes he refers to the inking process as a "pure bliss" he looks forward to, while everything else is tedium.  Proportion is sent through his intuitive, selective fish eye lens.  Every object is reflective of an interpretive whim, mood dictating application and even atmosphere.  The drawback to this approach is of course lost clarity, which is most noticeable in his facial features, conjured up without enough deliberation, tending to resemble the artist in real life.  I feel they are wearing his lips, regardless of gender.      
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Aaron Shunga's Recent reads

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Cerebus:  Form and Void- David Sim This book is an ambitious meld between fantasy and a critique of Ernest Hemingway.  Aside from being entirely cerebral, it is accompanied by very powerfully drawn winter scenes in a beautiful, photorealistic style.  Many objects are depicted as suspended fragments of shadow.  There is a long flashback featuring Ernest Hemingway's wife taking us through a recollection of her safari in Africa.  The story is overall effective in making us feel the sense of desperation during a blizzard and the anguish of such a long, arduous trail. My gripes are with the pacing and the composition.  A good deal of the scenes could stand to be illustrated in a more conventional style, as varying panel sizes tend to needlessly divert attention from the story.  A lot of dialogue had a tendency to change font and even include objects in the sound effects that represent letters (scissors as the letter P.)  I found these variations to be unnecessary, purist that I am.
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