Washouts

    (Renaissance Press, 2002)
™ and © Renaissance

Anyone who fondly remembers the small-press comic book of the ’90s Strange Attractors will be pleased to see the return of Michael Cohen, one of the leading proponents of comic-art primitivism, who’s back with a new title which retains all the odd, awkward grace and charm of first series. Try to imagine that Golden Age publisher Fiction House rose from the grave and gained the rights to the Hanna-Barbara cartoon Josie & The Pussycats in Outer Space and you’ll get close to what Cohen is doing in Washouts.

While Cohen is clearly infatuated with the standard sets and props of classic space opera, he tends to shy away from anything approximating “action.” (A spaceship full of marauding bandits is discreetly kept off-panel so more room can be given to what the heroines feel about it.) But it’s just this devotion to his hapless band of rejects (no one has so proudly worn a derisive group name since the days of The Inferior Five) that makes Washouts like nothing else being published.

— S.A. Bennett
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#1

July, 2002
Cover Price: $2.95
1 copy available for $0.99