OMG! ITZ JOJO'S BLOG!

Hey Everybody. This is my first contribution to the new and improved CBJ blog and i'd just like to thank everybody for their positive feedback on the new design for the site. We worked hard to get this together and i'm glad it's working out finally. The old site had a lot of kinks and we're still working to get this site up to its full potential. If you have any suggestions feel free to email us and let us know! We're here for you guys! We want to make your comics experience a magical experience full of high contrast typographic blogging! i'm serious!!!

Anyway a HUGE reason why i haven't really blogged yet is a lack of material to blog about. I honestly haven't been reading comics the way i used to since i got myself a full time job somewhere that isn't a comic book store. But since we got this blog up on the page i've been itching and scratching trying to figure out what it is about current comics that is blowing my mind right now. It's hard to say really... my weekly stash includes a healthy sampling of marvel books, some BPRD and related books. I love CRIMINAL! Incognito is great so far... Pretty much anything that Brubaker is doing makes me happy masks or no masks. I'm in love with the off the wall storytelling that is Dave Lapham's YOUNG LIARS. I also recently (FINALLY!) started to dive into Stan Sakai's Kurosawa inspired cartoon epic USAGI YOJIMBO. There's lots of other books and i'm sure you read them or will read them when they are collected properly so i'm still sort of at a loss as far as comics that i read regularly. So what i want to do for you guys is review books that you might have come across, looked over and thought to yourself "One day i'll read this." The problem being that you still need to be persuaded and maybe blogging about these books will get you to the shop and get it in your hands. Hey, don't get upset! It happens to all of us... Sometimes it takes me months to trust someone's word on a book and finally see what the hub ub is all about! I remember when the first issue of the walking dead came out.. I was working at a shop and i read it and JUST PLAIN DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE IT A CHANCE... So months (maybe even a year?) go by and the damn book keeps selling out. I eventually got on the bandwagon and BAM! now i'm in love. Anyway.. That will be my mission on this blog... to hip you to books that you probably aren't reading. Does that seem condescending? I swear that's not my intention at all.. I just want everyone to read good comics! 

So here we go... my first review... take a deep breath...

LOW MOON

by Jason

I started reading Jason's work a few years ago when i picked up WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS.. A Hitchcockian thriller where a John Everyman character is framed for the murder of his best friend. I recommend it to anybody who is in the market for a really well told, well executed noir comic experience. Jason's use of the ligne claire style popularized in Herge's TIN TIN comics won me over immediately. Not only is he using this style in an interesting way (incorporating anthropomorphic cats, dogs and birds into a sprawling economically rendered world), but he's taking it and pushing to make it his own. After reading it i immediately started picking up every Jason book i could find.. Thankfully Fantagraphics has made Jasons work readily available in U.S. comics shops so you don't have to pull your hair out to find these books! WE HAVE THEM HERE!

Anyway, as far as LOW MOON is concerned, I was at MOCCA a few weeks ago and i caught a glimpse of LOW MOON at the Fantagraphics booth. I was pretty stoked to see a new Jason book. I had no idea it was out.. i didn't even know it was coming out. It was like Christmas in June. I went back to the booth a few minutes later and all the copies were gone.. Sigh... Then a friend of mine pointed out that Jason was there, signing stacks of them... I met Jason... It was fairly awkward.. He drew a cartoon dog version of me smoking a cigarette in the inside of the book to make sure that i will love and cherish it forever. I took it home and ate it up.

LOW MOON is a fairly modest collection of short stories Jason had done in the last couple of years, including a short comic that he contributed to the New York Times some time ago which you can read here.. A spaghetti western where the game of Chess is the ultimate duel. Although the stories are short, they are perfect examples of  Jason's unique style, isolating compositions, and spot on pacing. Low Moon is a must have on my bookshelf, and i recommend it to anyone who is interested in sampling his work. I guarantee you will come back for more, and believe me, he's got lots of work to offer. 

That's it for now, kids... i hope this wasn't a huge waste of time for you, because i'm pretty sure i'll be doing this again in the very near future.