3 out of 5

After a year of confusion over the numbering of this series through various websites – different volumes, different issue numbers – I did the obvious thing and just checked the indicias, which leads me to believe I own the whole series and thus it’s ready for review.  To clarify: Paper Museum looks to be three single issues, released two years apart (starting in 2002), each on Nitz’s Jungle Boy Press imprint, and each listed as Volume # whatever, issue #1.  It’s an anthology book, 3 to 4 stories per issue, in magazine format.

First off: these don’t look like indie publications.  However it was organized (through grants, through contacts), Nitz was able to gather some awesome talent for Volume 1 and 2’s cover – Mike Allred, Kevin Nowlan, Steve Purcell – as well as some at-the-time up-and-coming creators (Nick Derington in issue #1) or simply madly impressive indie dudes (Wes Wedman in issue #3) for the contents; so despite being self-published, you’d certainly never guess, as this type of built-from-scratch work normally has much rougher edges.

The stories themselves are a bit hit or miss, though none of them are bad, just stunted.  Paper Museum was a promising anthology, so it would’ve been nice to see it more regularly, giving some of these characters – Derington’s The Shark, Nitz’s Saxon the Swordsman – more tales in which to shine.   Volume 1, split between Nitz and Derington, is perhaps the least impressive, with each creator’s tale – save The Shark bit – feeling somewhat incomplete or underwhelming.  Volume 2 starts off with the impressive Slim Fulton: Steam Powered Cowboy, with lovely punctuated negative art by Shawn Crystal, though it’s backed up by some wandering offerings from B. Clay Moore and Tom Fowler.  Volume 3, which takes a dip in packaging quality with cheaper paper stock for cover and contents, is actually the best: Nitz’s thrilling and funny Saxon tale (the second one, following an entry in Volume 1), brought to amazing life by Wes Wedman overwhelms – in a good way – the issue, carrying us through the melodramatic Devil in the Gears by Mark Smith and Jim Pezzetti and the simple yuks of Nitz’s and Seda’s The Woods.

I checked these out after getting interested in Nitz’s Dream Thief.  Alas, the writer hasn’t shown much consistency, and that sort of holds true for Paper Museum.  Still, I always dig anthologies, and I especially appreciate the 2000 AD style where each story is given more room to breathe; Paper Museum offers that with slightly middling results… results which would probably have shaped up to offer a whole lot more had the series had whatever it needed to continue.