#mizzard

[krispymation]

The world’s been heavy. Despite it all, I choose to create anyway.

[nudesreadingminicomics]

'Vortex' by William Cardini

This is 'Vortex' by William Cardini.  I really wanted to like this book.  I supported the Kickstarter.  I've followed his other stuff on hypercastle, I've dug his work.  This one just didn't sit with me.  Luckily I'm not a literate or credible reviewer so you can just ignore this blog and call me a piece of shit.  I felt that, at the very least, after a lot of glowing reviews, I'd put a negative one or two in here. 

When fantasy is done well, like in Brinkman's 'Multiforce' or Marra's 'Blades and Lazers' or Kyle's 'Distance Mover' the reader is given a real sense of the characters place and fixture in an entirely fictional and fabricated world that does not follow the laws of the one we live in.  Regardless of how much exposition is given we are, in great fantasy, well aware of the character's real role and presence in that world; just through it's great characterization we understand that world more its almost purely through osmosis.  

The exposition is there in Vortex but its in the form of random characters paraded through who are telling the main character, 'the Mizzard' how shit works.  We can see Cardini trying to show us that world, give us a tactile sense of it, but when reading it I just feel like a kid is explaining to me his favorite comic book.  Which is cool and can be cool but the fanboy element is strong here and a hipster such as I cannot separate the work from its obvious influences and homages.

Cardini is proving his skills as an artist for sure.  Whereas in the fiction he doesn't plot out the universe, the rules, the form so much we see him really putting serious boundaries on how he's gonna craft these pages and represent them.  The method is very impressive and his skills as a draftsman are obvious, its just that by about halfway through I was really wishing the drawings were done in ink on notebook paper, that they were just as organic and nasty and as splotchy as the characters they are trying to represent.  Its an uneasy hi fi/lo fi balance being sought by an artist who is obviously much smarter than the work he is creating. 

but don't take my word for it, check the book out for yourselves and see what you think; maybe read it and drop me a line and prove me wrong.  As I said before I've dug Cardini's work but this one just missed the mark for me.  And sparkplug books does a great job and puts out some fantastic material, I'm really happy that I was able to contribute to the Kickstarter for this one. 

buy it here!!! http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/comic-books/vortex/