Paperbacks and Ink Stains Collection: Class of 2015- 2017
Reading time: 2 minutes
Vampires, warriors and wannabe satanists, the Paperbacks and Ink Stains collection pans various genres and there's something for everyone. That being said many tales have a similar type of humour and art styles so if you dislike one you may dislike a lot more. Now I liked he humour from the up yours parachute in vampire wonderland to a warrior being part of your insurance plan when in a mad Max style world. But the art in many stories isn't detailed enough either on the characters or background and like several artist together the bodies are square and distorted kind of reminding me of Picasso's paintings.
There's so many stories in the Paperbacks and Ink Stains anthology I thought it best to focus just on my favourites. Together Forever is a simple werewolf story where a dad goes missing then turns into a werewolf and returns but it has a nice twist and I like the design of the werewolf with glowing orange eyes that can be both savage and sad.
Slaycation again had a nice twist on a simple story this time a group of killers go on vacation but they come up against an old couple that are like an extreme version of home alone.
EPS had my favourite art with it use of goggles for panel shape, realistic drawing and colour scheme emphasising the spy nature. Another interesting use of art which again ties into the story is an immersive gaming experience where it had a guy go into the video game like Mario. Combined with the sound effects like ding for when he picks up coins this reminds me of the Scott Pilgrim film and also worries me about the level of tech we may one day have.
Prophets of Doom was a story about wannabe and stupid satanists who do bring about the next apocalypse and partly because of the length and partly because of the great dialogue the characters were all three dimensional and different to one another something lacking in most of the short pieces. The art was occasionally a bit too simplistic for my liking but the fact that you never see the satanists faces just their robes is more comical and leads to you thinking about what they look like rather than disappointed that the artist didn't bother drawing their faces. The humour from one liners, breaks in the fourth wall and situations they find themselves in is hilarious.
My main complaint with this story is after 60 pages it doesn't end and some of the panels seem filler which I guess fits the humourous tone of the comic but it's annoying. Lastly many of the stories could have been longer than a few pages as the ideas behind them were worth exploring further.
Overall, Paperbacks and Ink Stains is an interesting collection with great humour, great story ideas and occasionally great art.
Support Us
Enjoyed this article?
Supporting us on Ko-fi helps keep Comic Book News UK running and lets us continue championing indie comic creators across the UK. Every contribution makes a real difference.
100% goes towards supporting indie creators
