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Snow Monkeys #2
posted December 31, 2002
 

Creator: Megan Whitmarsh
Publishing Info: Self-Published Mini-Comic, 2000
Ordering Numbers: None

This year 2000 effort is much more effectively realized than the first issue, reviewed in a previous installment of this column. Snow Monkeys provides a mixing of fantasy and the mundane familiar to readers of cartoonists like James Kochalka. Here the art that Whitmarsh puts to page has become more consistent, and she slightly expands her cast of characters to good effect. Hers is a very limited idiom in a lot of ways, and barring magnificently effective art and hilarious scene work generally doesn't work for anyone. Your appetite for these comics will depend greatly on how much you like this kind of life-through-cuteness approach to stories. For me, this is like watching one of those British sitcoms where no one is really all that funny, or attractive, but there's something absorbing about the dingy wallpaper and slightly awful line readings. In the end you're conflicted over whether or not you wasted the time spent, and the final decision over whether to go back is probably dependent on the answer.

(Whitmarsh may have #3 done by now, as well as something called Tiny Little Unicorn. Each of these comics is $4 postage paid from Megan at 1600 N. Ave 56, Los Angeles, CA 90042. I also have megan@tinyindustries.com as a contact, and she claims to sell her work through Meltdown, Quimby's, Printed Matter and Big Jar.)

Orginally Published in the "Minimalism" column in The Comics Journal. I don't remember when.