Renderwrx Productions

Baltic Comics Magazine (ku)š! #7

Released February 2011

New issue full of forest tales by International and Latvian artists. The Chinese celebrate the year of the rabbit, while we celebrate like the UN the year of the forest, while not excluding rabbits too...

Full info and how to order found here

Review by PD Houston:

I've been posting release details about this comic for the past few issues on the Coverless blog, finally I put some money down and purchased an issue. What I got was a beautifully designed mini pocket book comic. It's a fat little book (almost 100 pages) and it's something I would ideally bring with me on a long bus or airplane ride. It's something you can fit in the back pocket of your trousers or a pocket on your jacket. It's a lovely looking little book with a beautiful cover by Till Hafenbrak. I'd give it an award for overall package design, if I had one to give. You can't beat the packaging on this comic. Lovely.

This anthology comic series is theme based and issue 7 was all about forests. So casually flipping through the pages I was excited to read this as the varied art at first glance looked great. Being a veteran anthology comic reader I knew there would be some stories I would like more than others. But after I began reading, it quickly became apparent that abstraction is also a theme (intentional or not). Abstract comics are cool and can be quite entertaining at times. But abstract comics can also be quite horrible if the execution is off. To me abstract is either good or bad, there's no meh or middle ground in abstract art. Either you succeed or you fail. You get it or you don't. Unfortunately the many abstract comics in this volume went largely over my head and I ended up enjoying less than I thought I would.

The stories were delivered to us in rapid fashion, some stories only a page long, others 2 or 4 pages and many seemed badly resolved. Do I blame myself for not understanding the majority of the stories found inside or do I blame the editors for poor decisions on content? Probably I should just leave it up to subjective discretion and let every individual make their own decision. Obviously people at the Kus office loved the whole package or they wouldn't have published it.

I mean the stories by Ansis Purins, Duy Thang Nguyen, Ukno, Maija Liduma, Derek M Ballard, Sabine Moore & Oskar Pavlovskis were the obvious stand outs and I found no fault with them, but you be the judge yourself, everyone will have their own favorites.

Nonetheless I will still be looking forward to new issues of this comic, because while I may find fault with the overall story content, the breadth of artistic talent to be found within is overflowing. Lots of pretty pictures in this comic to look at again and again. I do recommend it to any and all hardcore indy comic fans, it's the type of book you need to know about and read at least once.