I Know God Smiles on These Good Times
Story:
Art:

Written & Art by Paul Hornschemeier

Published by I Don't Get It Graphics
Price: $2.50

My Verdict: Whoa.

Between this site and a previous project I was involved with, I've read a slew of comics and reviewed a few of them. It takes a lot to make me jerk around in my chair like I've just been prodded with something sharp. That's probably because the comic book, as a medium, is so terribly unique and so terribly under-appreciated in the hands of its artists.

However, the good side of all this is that because there's so much shite out there--when there are diamonds, they glimmer like crazy and are easier to pick out. And this book is one of those diamonds. In the graphics, a guy in a helmet works at some computer terminal and goes home at the end of the day, meanwhile, in the prose, someone--we presume the author--is telling a story about a tryst at camp he had one year. Anybody can write a book where two stories are happening. I've seen them. Those books bore me, because what the hell's the point?

Hornschemeier gives you a point like a javelin up the nostril. And the problem with this book is that that's about all I can reveal lest I mess with your concept of the book as a whole. What I can tell you, though, is that the art serves the purposes of the book extraordinarily well, and every time I flip through I run across something else that gives me pause in how both story and art interact. And if Hornschemeier's reading this, he's probably thinking, "God, what a pretentious wank this reviewer is."

Anyway--had never heard of Sequential Comics before this, and now I'll inhale the rest. Good stuff.