Side B: The Music Lovers Comic Anthology by Rachel Dukes

Side B: The Music Lovers Comic Anthology Reviews

• 
  Matti Karjalainen

  "Side B: The Music Lover's Comic Anthology" (Poseur Ink, 2009) lienee tarttunut mukaan joltakin Englannin-reissulta. Sarjakuva-antologia pitää sisällään lyhyitä musiikkiaiheisia sarjakuvia. En tunnistanut taiteilijoista etukäteen kuin ihmissuhde- ja Star Wars -jutuistaan tutun
  Jeffrey Brownin. Sarjakuvien taso vaihteli laidasta laitaan, kuten odottaa sopii. Jutut keskittyvät lähinnä indie- ja punk-kuvioihin, enkä siten saanut kummoistakaan tarttumapintaa tarinoihin.
• 
  Rand

  The comix version of
  LIt Riffs— a fun way to
  reminisce over
  teenaged feelings and mixtapes and fumblings and the general relation between words and image and sounds.
  
  Overall there is a strong bias towards varying shades pop and punk. Given that most of these comix artists are culled from the zine community, that is not surprising. Three of the pieces dealt with drugs: one in a just-say-no manner, another involving the social politics of the straight edge movement and another was a bittersweet memorial to a too-young friend lost to an overdose.
  
  One of the strongest pieces is also one of the shortest—
  Rob Guillory's prose poem with a swirling collage of musical imagery. While Guillory's illustration really ties it all together, it's his words that really grabbed me and make a better manifesto than the introductory remarks by Dukes. Here is part of his thoughts on
  how music works:

  What moves us is what's
  inside the music, the spirit of the musician, the spirit that lives within
  all art and all life. You can call it God, the
  collective consciousness,
  whatever. It's there.
  You've felt it. It is that invisible thing that moves from the fingers of the musician, to the instruments, to the recording, throughout your stereo, into your
  heart and pours out through our
  finger tips as artists of a different craft. It's not a sound, but a
  feeling, instead
  reverberating against
  our souls and moving us to do great things.

  Unfortunately there is no table of contents. And the author notes in the back are not much help in deciphering whose work is whose. That many of the pieces are not signed does not help...
  
  Mitch Clem did a clever homage to the Mr. T Experience's "Checkers Speech".
  
  The publisher, Poseur Ink, got started making merch for Hot Topic to sell. There's an irony hiding in here as a few of the pieces in this collection bemoan the commercialization of the punk rock subculture & Hot Topic has been instrumental in selling official punk rock outfits. But that's neither hear nor their.
  
  If you really like music and underground comix, then you would enjoy reading this.
• 
  Daniel

  Like any anthology, this is a grab bag. Some stories - like the ones by Liz Ballie and Madeleine Flores - are absolutely wonderful, while others are too obvious with the theme, overly cerebral, and soapbox-y. Still glad I picked it up, but it's one of the more inconsistent anthologies I've read.
• 
  Clint

  I wouldn't read this content in any other format, so putting it in comic form doesn't save it. Especially not these comics. Sorry, Mahfood and Crosland, even your contributions can't make me like this book.
• 
  Damon

  This was okay. I was surprised by how similar many of the pieces were, but maybe I shouldn't have been.
• 
  Rachel

  Like most collections of stories, some are great and some are meh.
• 
  AJ

  Hit or miss. Though I found it hilarious when one comic was all about the immaturity of having your whole life revolve around music while the next one was about how heroic that is.