2 out of 5

I understand the nature of anthologies like Negative Burn being springboards for talent, meaning it’s always going to be a mixed bag, but it’s still a series headed up by someone making editorial decisions, and so that can guide the ‘feeling’ of the contents.  ‘Burn’ has obviously been around for a while and published lots of notable stuff.  It’s second volume on Desperado I can’t speak to, but this single issue – while I’m giving an extra star for the quality of the presentation – is mostly empty, only the first story by name creator Mike Carey (whom I normally am ambivalent toward) really coming across as a standout.

The presentation – for a prestige bound book, the printing quality / paper choice is top notch.  They chose a lighter paper stock for the covers to keep it flexible but the printing is far enough from the binding that you can open the book comfortably without cracking the spine.  The colors on the front and back don’t pop, but the murkiness of the painting on the front actually benefits the oddity of the surreal image; the back being an ad, who cares.  The interior is all greyscale black and white and is incredibly clear, though the gray coloring has a cheap tone to it for some reason.  Just the gradients they work with, perhaps.  Regardless, the high readability makes one of the clunkier-art pieces clear that the problem with the layouts falls on the artist and not the publisher.

One by one:

Mike Carey’s Red Shift is a super fun supernatural tale that found a cool hook and just went with it, not overplaying or overexplaining,with the cartoonish style by David Windett actually selling the kid / spooky combo effectively.  Best story in the book.

Dove McHargue’s Father of 3 is a slightly embellished true-to-life newspaper strip style comic of raising 3 lil’ uns when you’re a cartoonist.  Perfect example of how to make this true-story kid shit actually amusing and not dopey.  Nice sketchy / crunchy style (reminds me of pre-Mignola Fegredo) and legitimately amusing.  Only one page, so hard to judge how it would work at length.

Barber by Elton Pruitt is an example of doing true-to-life in true-to-life snooze fashion.  Your dad or grandpa died and this is your tribute piece.  Snooze.  I’m sure it has meaning to the right person and will affect someone somewhere, but I didn’t care, and Renzo Podesta’s sketchbook artstyle gives no personality to the character or memories.

Rob Walton and R.G. Taylor’s ‘Hills Brothers’ behind-the-music parody of a Simon and Garfunkel proxy is chuckly, looks like Ryan Dunlavey’s art, but… y’know, meh. Like, you guess it’s funny but you won’t remember reading it.

Mike Raicht’s ‘The Inn Between’ is a part 2.  Seems like a potentially interesting story of a slaughter-at-the-inn-whodunnit-they-crazy story, but the dialogue is a bit clunky and Dalabor Talajic’s framing makes that clunkiness even clunkier.

Shawn Crystal’s sketches.  Cool…?  I’m questioning putting sketches in an anthology format.

Americana by Joe Karg, Ryan Prows,  and Adam Ford.  Where the book goes from readable to annoying.  Heavily inked and drawn in the thick-figured character of earlier Darwyn Cooke, this is like a steampunk retelling of Paul Revere that has promise just in its pitch but think it’s way cooler than it is, and the confusing art renders sequences baffling.  You struggle for a couple pages to understand what’s what, and then you give up.

Gauche Man – Stephan Nilson and Scott Fry.  Clearly imperfect anatomics slot this as an indie effort (as in the artist’s style isn’t fully their own yet) and the superhero parody feels like it was written by a teenager.

Blackboard Jumble – R.G. Taylor.  Like Family Circus for a teacher.  Start strong, finish weak.

So only one notable, most meh, with the end of the book sludged up with annoying efforts.  Womp womp.