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iREVIEWS by Greg McElhatton greg@gregmce.com
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TODAY'S iREVIEW
Arm's Length #1
By Mark Price
32 pages, black and white
Published
by Third Wind Press
It's always nice to see people publishing comics in different genres. I'm also always happy to see Xeric Grant funded books show up. When the two merge together, you might be lucky enough to end up with a comic like Mark Price's Arm's Length.
Arm's Length's main feature ("My Favorite Roadshow") is about Tim, a waiter trying to make it big in the world of stand-up comedy. He doesn't seem to be terribly good at either profession, but everything seems brighter when Bob Hope comes into the restaurant one evening and Tim invites him to where he'll be doing standup the next night...
The main character of "My Favorite Roadshow" notes at one point that good comedy sets a situation up, repeats it a second time... and then for a conclusion wildly diverges from the first two parts. To some extent, that's what Price does with "My Favorite Roadshow", and it works quite effectively. Tim's an interesting character; we see inside his head, we hear what he's thinking, but it's still hard to really understand him. I really like the end result, especially with all the little touches in the dialogue. (The people at the club's comment about it getting "weird again" says a lot about Tim's behavior patterns.) The other two stories ("The Artist at Sixty" and the one-page "Beat the System!") are good, but "My Favorite Roadshow" by far and large steals the show—something Tim would be happy to hear.
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Price's art is great; it's a very loose-lined style, and just like Price's writing there's a lot of nice little touches. I love how Price draws Tim's glasses, almost as if they're sunglasses with their opaque nature. You never really see Tim's eyes, just in the same way that you can never really see through Tim and completely understand him. The stars shining in Tim's glasses after meeting Bob Hope are wonderful, and some of the background moments like the cars speeding through traffic look great. Price's use of panel structure is also noteworthy, using multiple panels to denote time. An extra, silent panel goes a long way towards creating the uncomfortable silence Price tries for, and I love later on when Tim is running and his progress is echoed from one panel to the next, shifting slightly for an almost staccato-like effect as his body slowly shifts forward.
Arm's Length is a really impressive first outing; Mark Price is definitely someone to keep an eye out for! I can't wait to see what he does next—based on this, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a winner. To get a copy of Arm's Length #1, send $3.95 to Mark Price at:
Third Wind Press
964 Edmonds Ave NE
Renton, WA 98056
Trust me, it's worth it.
Reviews by Greg McElhatton
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McElhatton's web site: http://www.gregmce.com/
Greg McElhatton
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