Featuring: Kelly Alder, Gregory Benton, Dave Cooper, Jeffrey Brown, Mark Burrier, Nick Derington, Max Estes, Doug Fraser, Tom Gauld, Jay Geldhof, Sam Hester, Paul Hornschemeier, Simone Lia, Ellen Lindner, Terry Marks, Laurenn McCubbin, Scott Mills, Bernie Mireault, Scott Morse, John Pham, Chris Pitzer, Plankton Art Company, Dave Plunkert, Joel Priddy, Paul Rivoche, Zack Soto, Vincent Stall, Rob Ullman
Publisher: AdHouse Books
I loved the concept: stories about robots and space. And when I saw the book, I was impressed with the overall appearance of the book before I even opened it. A nicely printed cover, a nice size, rounded corners. Spiffy. A quick flip through also seemed good - black and white artwork with shades of blue, including an attractive metallic blue.
But this is an anthology, which usually means a few good stories mixed in with lots of mediocre work. I do like anthologies that give me a chance to see different artists without having to commit to anything. Try it, if you don't like it you are probably already in to the next story. Kind of like the compilation CD idea that labels put out.
Overall I thought the quality of the stories was pretty reasonable. I wasn't particularly fond of the portfolios because that isn't what I read comics for, although the art seemed fine. I'm in these things for the story/image combinations. Luckily, there were some fine combinations here.
There were quite a few depressing, bleak outlook pieces, although my favorite might have been Joel Priddy's "Long Slow Flight of the Ashbot", which had an ending reminiscent of Cat's Cradle. Scott Mills' entry touched on a similar theme, although I'm not sure I was able to accept the physics idea presented. Paul Hornschmeier and Paul Rivoche also had similar themes, albeit on a smaller scale. Paul Rivoche had a nice retro, Toth-style feel to the story which I enjoyed.
Two surprises for me were the stories by the artists whose work I was most familiar with. Jeffrey Brown's entry seemed a little forced to fit into the robot theme, and while I really love his unfinished look the lettering mistakes were too distracting. Was there a deadline issue or something? Maybe I was spoiled by Clumsy.
The other artist whose work I was already acquainted with was Laurenn McCubbinn, whose unique art style didn't quite look as good in this volume as it does in the online work i've seen. The story also seems to suffer from the forced metaphor using the robot theme problem.
There are a few other stories I really enjoyed (John Pham, Mark Burriur, Tom Gauld) and a few that didn't quite work for me. I hope that the book does well enough to inspire more themed anthology works in such nice packaging, although I wonder if the cover price will scare some people off. Don't be scared! There is good stuff in there.