Mbleh! #1
Posted on July 20, 2002
Toenail Clippings contributor Bob Byrne goes solo with this impressively produced effort, mixing Renee French with 'Ed The Happy Clown', Al Columbia with early 'Jimmy Corrigan', but choosing to infuse the work with a kind of MTV madcap rather than any insightful, meditative element. As a result, Mbleh! lacks substance and composure, but provides lively read.
Two strips account for much of the content of this first issue: Clam Land, an energetic, fluid and frantic tale told with firm grasp of sequentialism, but with some silly, laboured dialogue; and Adictos, an earnestly dull affair with power fantasy undertones that, punctuated with tiresome pockets of exposition which disrupt narrative flow, is lamentably confused and fails dramatically on the story-telling front. In fairness, the latter is probably an early development effort, and on the positive side serves to highlight the strengths of the strips that surround it.
Speaking of which...these shorter efforts provide the more affecting moments in the form of the agreeably disturbing Fugue 1, the dippy Hot Coffee, and the just plain funny Ace That Interview, Airport Court and Freaky Facts. Most hilarious moment however comes with the first panel of the opening strip - Grated Cheese - in which a man in a supermarket examines a packet he has just plucked from a shelf. Incredulity verges on indignation as he exclaims 'Wuh? You can buy grated cheese?!' Priceless!
Gratuitously unpleasant at times (the rape-droid of Fugue 2 in particular), Mbleh! often strikes a hollow note and flatlines due to an absence of charm, but succeeds in providing a diverting entertainment hued with defective personality. The computer-enhanced artwork offers some neat, ambitious tricks reminiscent of Columbia and Ware, but more importantly provides energy to an otherwise stiff cartooning style. All-in-all then, a sound first issue that hopefully will be proceeded by a second.
Toenail Clippings contributor Bob Byrne goes solo with this impressively produced effort, mixing Renee French with 'Ed The Happy Clown', Al Columbia with early 'Jimmy Corrigan', but choosing to infuse the work with a kind of MTV madcap rather than any insightful, meditative element. As a result, Mbleh! lacks substance and composure, but provides lively read.
Two strips account for much of the content of this first issue: Clam Land, an energetic, fluid and frantic tale told with firm grasp of sequentialism, but with some silly, laboured dialogue; and Adictos, an earnestly dull affair with power fantasy undertones that, punctuated with tiresome pockets of exposition which disrupt narrative flow, is lamentably confused and fails dramatically on the story-telling front. In fairness, the latter is probably an early development effort, and on the positive side serves to highlight the strengths of the strips that surround it.
Speaking of which...these shorter efforts provide the more affecting moments in the form of the agreeably disturbing Fugue 1, the dippy Hot Coffee, and the just plain funny Ace That Interview, Airport Court and Freaky Facts. Most hilarious moment however comes with the first panel of the opening strip - Grated Cheese - in which a man in a supermarket examines a packet he has just plucked from a shelf. Incredulity verges on indignation as he exclaims 'Wuh? You can buy grated cheese?!' Priceless!
Gratuitously unpleasant at times (the rape-droid of Fugue 2 in particular), Mbleh! often strikes a hollow note and flatlines due to an absence of charm, but succeeds in providing a diverting entertainment hued with defective personality. The computer-enhanced artwork offers some neat, ambitious tricks reminiscent of Columbia and Ware, but more importantly provides energy to an otherwise stiff cartooning style. All-in-all then, a sound first issue that hopefully will be proceeded by a second.
US size, 36 pages, $2.95 / €3 - available from www.clamnuts.com