Copybook Tales #1-3 (1995)

Posted: Tuesday, July 17, 2001
By: Darren Schroeder

Writer(s): J.Jones
Artist(s): Tim Levins
Publishers: True Patriot Studioes (Later reprinted by Slave Labour)
From: Canada
Price: 75¢ (Canada)

This is a review of a comic which is written by some teenage comic fans that is about a group of comic fans who are working on their own superhero comic which recycles many superhero clichés. The teenagers get into trouble at school, try to pick up girls, watch porno films on beta (80's alert) and do a lot of other "best years of their life" cliché type activities while also inhabiting the strange world of comic culture.

The structure of the book is based on the copybook/diary of Jamie Cruz, comic fan and creator and so we get a series of flashbacks interspersed with the older Jamie working on the idea of a comic based on those events. Everything so far is innocent fun with a food fight being the most dynamic event on display. There is is a lack of progression about these issues, things just glide along. Sure, the characters are all likeable and the dialogue is a joy to read reflecting a subtle sense of humour at work.

Things are just as charming in the art section, with Tim supporting the story admirably with well drawn characters populating a coherent and realistic world. There's physical humour on display here but it never quite becomes slapstick. It's a fun comic to read but it relies too much on a bunch of conventions we have seen in every coming of age story that has apperes before it. Maybe an original plot turned up in later issues.

In a Word: Familiar.



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