Strip Search (Dark Horse)

    (Dark Horse, 2003)
™ and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

Appropriately formatted in the horizontal style of a comic-strip collection (à la Garfield), this punny newcomer showcases the “winners” of Dark Horse’s recent popularity poll for aspiring cartoonists who submitted their work online.

Of these two dozen samples, some of the better black-and-white efforts are the coverboy Skullboy (a cross between Dogbert and Mini Me) and the Seneschal (a swordsman slaying swamp savages). On the colorized front are the computerized “Eye of the Beholder” (a modern paranoid’s version of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel) and photographic “Rites of Spring” (a spider falling in love with a doll).

Caroming across the spectrum of taste, content, and color, it’s a comics version of American Idol. Starry-eyed amateurs imitate their heroes, from Jack Kirby to Geof Darrow, with decidedly mixed results. Some contestants are short on natural talent, others on polished execution. Dark Horse tenaciously keeps publishing anthologies, which is to be commended. Even though cartoon syndication is a notoriously discouraging judge of new talent, readers will find that the quality in this collection is more uneven than that printed on the daily newspaper page.

— Oliver Chin
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