1 out of 5

Note to self: stop convincing yourself to buy these under the allure of an ongoing anthology.
(Backup note to self: I know you LOVE anthologies, but the actual success rate of those ongoing anthologies with you – Creepy, Eerie, DHP – ain’t so great.)
(Hopeful note to self: Doesn’t mean it can’t be done effectively, though.)
(Uneccessary note to self: Right, but my point being that you shouldn’t pretend like there’s been some high point to compare it to.  The high point has yet to be achieved.)
(Dude: 2000 AD.)
(Returning to Note Structure note to self: Class of its own, my friend.)

AND YET I SAID MORE.  Previous color anthology mini-series CMYK varied between okay and super-meh, with emphasis on the latter; the theme had potential but it never felt fully realized by its contributors, most thinking that just applying the palette to their short (and maybe saying the name of the color at some point in the story) would suffice.  The SFX mini-series seemed to get off to a much better start with Pop!: Perhaps because it was an easier concept to grasp; perhaps luck.  Either way, while still an average issue overall, it read like everyone actually -got it- this time.  Everything was readable, if not entertaining.  Slam!… sort of swings the pendulum back the other way.  SFX is still a more immediately understandable concept; I don’t feel anyone here missed the idea of, y’know, using sound effects as a story conceit – rather, the effect ends up getting -over- used.  And abused.  I know the interpretation of sounds is highly personal, of course, but the way “slam” is usually used in text does conjure up some common images: slamming doors, or, as Nathan Fox shows us on the cover (but unfortunately does not contribute a story actually using it) – slamming a wrestler into the mat.  And so I can understand most trying to stray from those common uses, supposing others might use it that way.  Solution: let’s use Slam! in ways it doesn’t make sense at all, and let’s make sure to repeat it every other panel so our reader GETS IT.

Is it wrong to drop the rating so low due to this – what I would consider – mis-use of the theme?  Considering how -dumb- I felt reading the book: yes.  These felt like high schoolers contributing shorts for an assignment: gag-worthy “modern” tales about dating (a “slam” app) or blogging (a “slam” webseries); people being “slammed” by insults; pounding – excuse me – slamming your fists on a door – it was just all so painfully… forced.  And that led to a lot of very generic stories.  Even the writer who went ahead and used one of the regular version (or a variation) – Frank Barbiere’s ‘Dead Flowers’ using the effect for a trunk slamming – *also* made sure you repeat the effect on each page, which sort of ruined the impact of the final use.  (I don’t like Barbiere’s writing, though, so I can stand in proud judgement and point to this tale as continued support.)

This leaves Will Pfeiffer as the only dude brave enough to just *do it*: Cellmates might’ve worked better as a longer-form one-shot, but he puncuates the beginning and end of his story with the “slam” of a jail cell.  Perfect.

Maybe there’s some good in the future for Vgo Quarterlies.  But barring any drastic editorial changes that hones the submissions, I can’t deal with another set of such forced, stereotypical, and rather pedantic stories.