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You are here: Home / Uncategorized / Conditioned behavior

Conditioned behavior

January 29, 2005 by David Welsh

So I bought the first volume of Love as a Foreign Language this week. And, dork that I am, I immediately went to the last page and tried to read it backwards. Sigh.

Behavioral glitches aside, I’m finally getting around to sampling more of Oni’s output. I’ll definitely get the next volume of LaaFL, as it’s got me curious about where things are headed. I love the supporting cast and the smaller moments of cultural disconnect. J. Torres does a nice job with the comic potential of alienation, and I really like Derek Kim’s clean, expressive art.

Scandalous was enjoyable if strangely slight. I’ve always been interested by the overlap between celebrity and politics, and the era explored here offers a lot of meaty material. Torres has constructed an interesting snapshot of the Red Scare’s fallout in Hollywood and the power and perils of gossip, but I think the story could have easily been twice as long. Or maybe I just wanted twice as many pages of Scott Chantler’s snappy, stylish illustrations.

I had some misgivings about the first volume of Love Fights, but enough people whose opinions I trust have convinced me to invest in the second. It’s on the way. And February is going to be Bryan Lee O’Malley month, with a re-release of Lost at Sea and the second volume of Scott Pilgrim headed my way.

By the way, does anyone know what’s going on with Everest? I liked the preview that came out on Free Comic Book Day. Did I miss it (likely), or has it been postponed?

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