The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1017: Mangazine v.3 #5, November 1999 (Ninja High School Week!)

This anthology series is apparently a number of Antarctic Press comics all bound (and not very well) together, though I'm not 100% sure which issues of each series are included. It was a nice sampler of the AP output, and might have felt a bit more at home in my previous week looking at the publisher, but c'est la vie. From what I can tell, the Ninja High School issue in this collection comes from the second volume of the series that focusses on Ricky Feeple, the younger brother of the first volume's focal character. But, as with most of what I've read this week, I don't know what the heck is going on, or who many of the characters were. The same goes for the other comics reprinted in this issue, though the Warrior Nun story is sort of self-contained, and thus made a bit more sense.

And this is the thing, I think. Dunn and company created their series having been inspired by manga series, and manga series are inevitably not one-off stories, but actually one long story told over the course of a long period of time. Thus Ninja High School almost requires of its reader an investment in the whole series. It's virtually impossible to pick up a single issue and just enjoy it. There's a definite time and place for such storytelling, and I generally love it, but this haphazard way I've attempted to enter the series is just not working.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1016: A Science Affair #1, 1994 (Ninja High School Week!)

It turns out that my scanner does not like foil covers, but here it is anyway.

This comic was weird, but not for the usual (as I'm coming to understand them) reasons that a Ninja High School comic might be weird. Yes, there's all the strangeness that is associated with the title, mixed with the strangeness that is associated with Fred Perry's Gold Digger, but the weirdest thing about it is that there's literally no credits anywhere in the issue. I have no idea who wrote, drew, edited this comic. I know that Antarctic Press published it, but that's about it. I don't come across comics that often that neglect to credit the artists involved, especially from the small press. There's no info on the GCD (actually, this variant didn't even exist there, but I've remedied that), and the only place I could find any credits was a mycomicshop.com which list Fred Perry as both writer and artist. But even lists of Perry's own works don't list this series.

Very odd.

But then, so is the comic. There's a couple of parodies of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in this issue that come into conflict with one another, an evil, magical Elvis impersonator called (one of the best villain names ever) Spellvis, as well as characters from Gold Digger (the main characters) and Ninja High School (secondary characters). I suppose the inclusion of the main cast of GD but not of NHS could support Perry's authorship, but I'd love something a little more concrete. That aside, the comic is fun, like most of the NHS comics I've looked at this week.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1011: Gold Digger Annual #8, September 2002 (Antarctic Press Week)

I know that there's been a few times that I've said I have no idea what happened in a particular comic. This time was the worst. I'm still not sure who I was supposed to be rooting for, who were the good guys and who the bad, and what was even remotely going on. And that didn't just hold for the main story, but for all of the back up ones that fill out the annual.

I can say the art was really quite good. It definitely seems to have been drawn by someone who was a fan of large-breasted women, but it's the comic industry, so there's that.

That aside, not much to say. It was a comic. I read it.

To be continued.