Jim Rugg
| Title | Creator | Publisher | Series | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project: Romantic | Jim Rugg | AdHouse Books | $15.00
($19.95 list) |
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This is the final installment of the "Project Trilogy" which provides the up-and-coming generation of cartoonists to work with traditional comics themes. Inititated by Project: Telstar, which dealt with science fiction themes with a focus on robots, and continued by Project: Superior, which had super heroics as its unifying theme, this time around, as the title suggests, the same generation of cartoonists is given a chance to tackle the romance comics genre. As with the first two anthologies, the works assembled here bear little semblance to their generic progentiors in the mainstream comics of yore, a guided tour of which we are given in the introductory essay by Bill Boichel (which is currently available online as a downloadable .pdf). "True" romance seems mostly a thing of the past in the stories that follow, which here primarily focus on -- at best -- snatching a moment of happiness with a fellow being. Many of the pieces center on unrequited love, heartbreak, romantic disaster, murder, mayhem and confusion. Sometimes it's played for laughs and sometimes for tears. Exceptions include Aaron Renier's "Reflectors and Rutabegas," which comes closest to being a traditional romance, and McGovern & Leandri's Dr. Id story, which employs a 1960s-Dr.-Strange-as-sex-therapist narrative that is certainly traditional in its form, if not in its content. As with all AdHouse Books, the production values are excellent and the quality of the artwork is uniformly high. Stand-outs for us include the contributions of Paul Rivoche, Hope Larson, Roger Petersen and Junko Mizuno, but doubtless every reader of this anthology will find their own favorites. And there's no way we can avoid singling out Robert Goodin's contribution: if there were an award for excellence in the service of perversion, this one would have the comics category all wrapped up. | |||||
| The Plain Janes | Jim Rugg | Minx | $7.77
($9.99 list) |
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While we're on the subject of comics created by Copacetic customers, now's probably a good time to mention The Plain Janes. Written by young adult author, Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool), it is pencilled and inked in its entirety by Pittsburgh's own Jim Rugg, of Street Angel fame. This 176-page trade paperback edition is the opening salvo of the new Minx™ line of graphic novels. Published by DC comics and aimed at teenage readers, the Minx line is intended as a made-in-the-USA alternative to the phenomenally successfull manga series published by Tokyo Pop and Viz. "So, how does this rate as competition?" you may ask. Well, for starters, there's certainly quite a bit more going on in The Plain Janes than in your average Tokyo Pop production. It is a self-contained graphic novel, with a beginning, middle and end - unlike the majority of manga offerings aimed at this same market, which go on for as many volumes as the publishers feel they can get away with. Castellucci's plot is - relatively speaking - fairly complex, involving a big city girl, Jane, who has had a close call with an urban terrorist bomb attack and as a result now finds herself firmly ensconced in an alienating suburbia, hovered over by nervous parents, yearning to make new friends, and nostalgic for the funky aesthetics of her former urban environs. How Jane comes to terms with all this makes for the story, which is clearly and cogently drawn by Rugg, who has amply demonstrated his professionalism here. Being that this is the first offering of an entirely new line representing DC's entrance into a new market, there was sure to be a lot of pressure on him to toe the corporate line and deliver a product that the editor could convince the various departments to line up behind. Clearly, this was not a project on which Rugg could go all out and deliver the visual pyrotechnics that readers of Street Angel so enjoyed. However, the artwork on display here provides ample evidence that Rugg successfully met the challenges of his assignment, which was to create an informative, engaging and enjoyable visual representation of the story. If you have a teenage comics reader in your life, we recommend that you let them know about The Plain Janes. |
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| Cold Heat Special #4 | Jim Rugg | PictureBox | Cold Heat | $2.50
($3.00 list) |
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This time around we have a16-page tabloid newspaper comic book filled with further far out fables featuring Cassandra -- aka Castle -- cavorting with chaos. Santoro and Rugg employ the large (22" x 17", when opened) "canvas" of the tabloid format to excellent effect, creating a feast for the eyes with finely rendered dramatic imagery that ranges from psychedlicized fast food bathroom interiors to landscapes of the rolling hills of (what appears to be) western PA, all in the service of a tale of temporal displacement that demonstrates that the past is still here, all around us, and that travelling through time is a simple matter of opening a door or two. There may be some side effects, however... | |||||