Slab 2

Posted: Tuesday, September 9, 2003
By: Darren Schroeder

Cover of Slab 2 Creator(s): John Miers
Publishers: Self Published
From: UK
Price: $4 (US), £ 2.50 (UK)

Jon's back in a world of his making. The talking rocks appear in a series of stories that cover a number of genres. There's a space opera as a couple try and escape their arch nemesis and end up crashing on a strange planet. We get to see the evolution of life on a slab planet. Slab Marlow is hired by a pretty girl to find out where her jazz-playing husband has disappeared to.

This collection moves on from the joke of having all the characters drawn as rocks and concentrates on crafting interesting stories.. The space opera is painfully clichéd, but that's the joke. The daft hero who keeps overlooking how it is actually Slabina who does a lot of the saving the day. The evolution story is wordless, but works exceedingly well in getting its ideas across. Life on a beautiful plant goes to crap once slabs form separate groups. The Detective story isn't quite as satisfying, as there is no real detective work being done. Slab Malone just reads a newspaper headline.

All the stories score highly in the artwork stakes, with John's works looking very fine. With the slabs requiring a minimum of work John is free to work on dynamic backgrounds, especially in the space opera story. The evolution world comic has some imaginative landscapes and strong use of large areas of black. And last but not least, Slab Marlow has amore-simplified backgrounds with nifty panel layouts.

What I had been expecting to be a gimmick comic turns out to be a very readable collection of stories that just happen to share a standard character design. Worth a look.

In a Word: Solid.



If you have a comment or question about Small Press then feel free to contact me