From the Reading Pile
Just got word today that most of the zine and comics reviews I contributed to the next edition of Top Shelf were cut. C'est la vie. Here's a handful of reviews of some of the self-published comics and zines that pile on my floor.

Comb-Over #2: Ed Curran, Dave Bryson, and Joe Keinberger team up for this 40-page comic of darkly humorous one-offs and parodies. In "How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone," Bryson turns a seemingly harmless how-to into an Ivan Brunetti-styled gag strip. Curran shares a malicious-minded of roommate life in "Toe Skin Crunch." But it's Keinberger whose offerings -- "Eddie the Pill," "Windy Day," and "Stuart" -- make the mini worthwhile. While the first three-page opener is an extended play on words, the 11-page "Windy Day" is an impressive Ralph Steadman-meets-Robert Lewis assortment of one-page vignettes showing what might happen on a windy day in March. "Stuart," then, is a quick bit of petty power play that caps the issue on a bittersweet note. I'll look forward to more from Keinberger and Bryson in the future! Available from Dave Bryson, 19 Taft St. #1, Dorchester, MA 02125.

Lowbrow Reader of Basement Brow Comedy #1: Published by someone who's a music writer for Time Out New York and a friend of Camden Joy or Mark Lerner -- guessing from the ad for Camden's upcoming Highwater Books novels -- the Lowbrow Reader belongs on the zine racks of comic shops for one reason only. It's not the Johann Sebastian Bach-tweaking sheet music-styled "Quartet for Three Strings and a Talking Jew," (although that's quite clever) and it's not for the rest of the 32-page zine's humor pieces on Billy Madison, the Three Stooges, Howard Stern, or Will Ferrell's portrayals of George Bush on Saturday Night Live. No, it's for Neil Michael Hagerty's eight-page treatise on CAR-toons Magazine, a now-defunct Mad-like satire periodical that focused on hot rod culture. Hagerty's feature is quite similar to a piece Highwater's own Tom Devlin wanted to do for the SPX annual for several years, and it's an important piece of comics ephemera history. Hagerty looks at CAR-toons mission, style, contributors, and content, concentrating on an issue from late 1964 -- well in the magazine's hey day (it wasted away until 1991). In so doing, he addresses CAR-toons relationship to other enthusiast parody magazines of the day, Von Dutch's legacy, and the magazine's role as a gateway to the wider fandom of hot rods. May each issue of the Lowbrow Reader contain such gems, and may Bach burn rubber in his grave. Available from Jay Ruttenberg, 243 W. 15th St. #3RW, New York City, NY 10011 USA.

Low Jinx #3: Riffing off of Matt Feazell's Understanding Minicomics and Coober Skeber #2, Kurt Wolfgang's stellar 100-page self-published anthology pinches, pokes, and prods the sacred cows of independent comics. Edward Gorey meets Dr. Seuss. Dean Haspiel's Billy Dogma tries to pimp his girlfriend. The Maus cast smuggles drugs. Sam Henderson gets dissed. Ron Rege, Jr., gets tweaked. Jordan Crane tackles Chris Ware with a brilliant 10-page send up of Ware's multi-threaded process-oriented narrative style. John Porcellino's King Cat takes Johnny Ryan to meet the Fort Thunder gang, to visit the Million Year Picnic -- and to save his comics bacon. And Jef Czekaj pinches Brian Ralph's cheeks with a 12-page critique of Ralph's plotting, character development, and dialogue. While it's not always clear who's making fun of whom, Tony Consiglio, Eric Reynolds, Jessie Reklaw, Crane, Czekaj, Henderson, Wolfgang, and the rest of the gang take friendly and funny jabs at some of comics' greatest. Available from Wolfgang at Noe-Fie Monomedia, 14 Allen Pl., Canton, CT 06019.