The Tooth Fairy Wars

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An occasional series of brief posts on the 2015 AML Award nominees.

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tooth fairy wars

I’m not familiar with the work of writer Kate Coombs, but illustrator Jake Parker is a friend of mine whom I’ve written about before. This book puts all his skills to use. In fact, I would say this is his best picture book to date. Coombs’s story is a perfect match for his skills.

The story is of Nathan who does not want the Tooth Fairy to take his teeth. He tries hiding, he tries reasoning—she keeps taking his teeth and leaving a dollar behind. She has a job and she does it well.

Coombs is wise to play things straight. Everything is plain and understated (except, perhaps (and suitably), the insanely over-the-top bureaucratic mumbojumbo the Tooth Fairy cites). Parker follows her lead, and even as the conflict escalates, even as the stakes get higher and higher, the visual jokes are never forced either.

But when the Tooth Fairy brings in the big guns, well! I turned the page and started—I kid you not—guffawing. This is hilarious stuff. And then the diplomats arrive (including the cousin of a Hugo Earhart sidekick) and the story is resolved into a pleasant denouement, a perfectly paced wagonride downhill from the conflict’s climax.

A perfect piece of picture-book comedy.

Return of the Green Monk(also: Inktober!)

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Those of you with long memories (or who followed my advice and bought the thing) will recall Brandon Dayton’s comic Green Monk. Well! When I was in Salt Lake I had a chat with Brandon and he showed me pencils for a new Green Monk story. (It looked good.) And the great news for all of us? He’s starting to put the inked art online:

 

Start the story from the beginning.

Follow Brandon’s Tumblr.

Follow Brandon on Twitter.

Support The Green Monk on Patreon.

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Jake Parker is having a banner year. Skull Chaser‘s been getting attention. He’s been tapped to take over art duties (at least temporarily) at Marvel’s breakout hit Rocket Raccoon. He’s working on a new Missile Mouse book. And his brainchild Inktober has gone massively viral this year, at times hitting thousands of hits an hour: Pinterest! Tumblr! Twitter! Facebook! Instagram!

Inktober is, simply, drawing in ink each day of October (or as many days as your endurance will allow) and posting it online. The first year, Jake’s rule was no pencils, but he’s relaxed that now as you can see with the story he’s telling this Inktober.

(Note: Inktober not Jake’s only brainchild.)

Follow Jake on Twitter.

Follow Jake’s Tumblr.

Follow Jake on Pinterest.

Support Skull Chaser on Patreon.

Kickstarting Jake Parker

antlerboy.

Remember Missile Mouse? Book one? Book two? The mind behind these books is one Jake Parker, one of my favorite comics artists, and the one one who meets both these categories: I buy most everything he does. I share it with my kids.

Jake has started a new Kickstarter campaign which has in very few days racked up a tremendous amount of money. Let’s talk with Jake about what he’s up to, shall we?

Continue reading “Kickstarting Jake Parker”

A Survey of Mormon Comix by Theric Jepson

When I asked Theric Jepson to write a bit about Mormon graphic novels, I didn’t expect that he would launch a full on bibliographic project. But he did — and even though the results make for a very long post, it’s very much worth a read. Indeed, it’s quite the amazing project and must have taken quite some time to put together. Thanks, Theric. ~Wm Morris

I’m also going to make you click through for the full post because the “more” tag seems to be causing some problems with the special formatting for the post.

Continue reading “A Survey of Mormon Comix by Theric Jepson”