Thursday 10 June 2010

Review: Something Brewing - By Amanda Elanor Tribble

Something Brewing is one of the books I snatched from the Comic Village at the MCM Expo in May. The cover attracted me, people say don't judge a book by its cover but lets be honest a comic book cover is a different matter, it's part of the whole presentation and overall this is a lovely thing to see. The comic itself is about two people, Lou a struggling writer and Dan who works in the cafe that she frequents and their everyday life. Despite it being a short (but sweet) comic it's still very clear to see this friendship between them has been developing for a while and is possibly changing into more. The simplicity of the backgrounds gives each page a spacious, open feel, it invites you to read more, sometimes it's tempting to pour detail after detail into the background but less is more in this case, it really helps to highlight the feelings between the characters and their situations. A great short read, perfect for hiding inside your text books during school (not that I would encourage such behaviour, specially if you get caught).
So in summary a lovely book by a lovely person, she was kind enough to sign the first page of my copy, you can tell how genuinely nice she is by the lengthy thanks she gives on the back page.
Very much worth the read.

Random thing about the comic: The cover is printed in such a way that all the blacks are slightly raised off the page, I get easily amused when that happens and like to run my fingers over the synopsis and pretend like it's Braille. Not quite that far, I just like the feel of it.

This comic is: Shiny!
To see more of Amanda's work you can visit Painted Lunacy.



This is what I love about small press and self published comics, it's so easy to get into it that we get to see so many talented people develop their styles right there infront of us. Age, experience, contacts, none of that matters, you just need the will and drive to do it and all those other small press, self published types are always there to help. I hope to see much more from Amanda in the future.

Who else has bought this comic? Feel free to share your views in the comments.