AGGGHHHHH

I have to say that, out of all of the Comic Book League's "Astonishing New York Fantasy" selections, my favorite was the one-page short comic starring James Franco by D.B. Costales. Now, it's not completely original; a similar, less NYU-specific scene unfolded with Margot Kidder in an episode of Family Guy (which I could only find in German, but I'm pretty sure it's even better that way), but it's fun, short, and effective. The art perfectly complements the insanity, and, moreover, it's consistent. I'm not going to insult the work of any student artist, but many of the stories fall short because of inconsistent or messy figure work, panel borders, and lettering. Costales sidesteps these issues by doing everything by hand with a suitably dark pen, taking cares to erase or avoid stray marks.

I found a lot of Taimur Dar and Connie Kim's short parodies to be amusing too, and I like the (uncredited?) "pin-ups" in the back of the volume. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't get a kick out of the opening tale by Andrew Choi and Costales (whose work shows less polish here) thanks to its animal protagonists, but I would have liked to have seen it hand-lettered and a little clearer with its central concept.

All in all, some good fun is present in this "double-sized" spectacular, all for the low, low price of free.