Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Poopsheet.

Poopsheet Foundation
Review by R. Krauss

If you read Shannon Smith's small press comic reviews on his blog File Under Other, it isn't long before you're struck with the notion he must be a pretty nice guy. The image is only reinforced through his latest mini comic.

The book is a collection of several different projects, so while there's no overall theme, the pieces still work together and provide a varied reading experience.

Laughing Sam's Dice is Smith's contribution to a chain story created for Narrative Corpse #2. It's only a segment, but it's fun to watch as Jimi Hendrix guides the unnamed main character (Laughing Sam perhaps?) through Electric Lady Land.

In a World of Savages presents a few pages of auto-bio comic strips in which Smith highlights real or imagined slices of life.

Smith turned Superbowl Sunday into Hourly Comic Day on February 1st cranking out over a dozen comics and gags to celebrate his team's participation and eventual win that day.

Inspired by the drawings fans can pick up from cartoonists at conventions, Smith created Mailcon, a project that extends the concept—without the convention. Just send him a drawing request along with an SASE and he'll send you a drawing. Distraction concludes with a nice sampling of drawings from Mailcon.

The cartooning in Distraction ranges from sketchy (Hourly Comic Day) to polished (Mailcon). Either way, they're full of energy and humor. I enjoyed Smith's writing too. His stories and gags are playful and warm-hearted with an occasional sarcastic aside.

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction is 40 b&w pages, plus color cover. 7" x 8.5", handmade with saddle-stitch binding. It's available for $4 from his website (along with Mailcon directions). Mature readers.

Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Optical Sloth

Optical Sloth

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction

Generally speaking I’m against throwing your own name in your comic title, but if you’re going to go all the way like Shannon did and also picture yourself bursting through the cover, I say more power to the man. This is a collection of odds and ends, so naturally some pieces are going to better than others. Things start off slow with a baffling story of a man who runs into an all-powerful Jimmy Hendrix and gets taken to heaven with a bunch of naked ladies who preach nothing but love. Oddly, the guy can’t wait to get out of there, but seems to have gotten something from the whole experience. Then there a few one page autobio pieces, at least a couple of which I’ve already seen in his other minis, but the piece sampled below was new to me and nicely reflects the struggle to ever find a copy of The Comic’s Journal. The heart of the book is up next, and 24 hour comics folk take note: Shannon has blasted you all out of the water. He decided to do a one page comic every hour of Super Bowl Sunday, starting at 8am and ending around midnight. It’s especially impressive because the guy is a Steeler’s fan and he still took time out of the day to make a comic. Granted, the art is about as simple as you can get, and I got a lot more out of reading this hourly strip that I just about ever have by reading most daily diary comics. The hourly format really gave him time to dig into the small details. There’s waking up, dealing with a nagging headache, cleaning up cat puke, picking up toys for his kids, making unhealthy food for the big day, playing with toys with his kids, and finally watching the game. If that sounds like too much detail for you, you’re clearly not a fan of autobio. You can’t get much more “day in the life” than this. Finally there’s a pile of sketches in the back of the comic, mostly stuff he’s sent to people who’ve mailed in over the years. I particularly enjoyed Ant Man fighting an ant over a twinkie, but maybe Wonder Woman using her lasso the make the Invisible confess her true love would be more your thing. It’s a pretty nice pile of comic any way you look at it, and well worth checking out. It’s $4, and if that’s too rich for your blood at the moment there are always all the cheap, cheap minis listed below this to convince you. $4

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraciton #1 can be purchased here.

A-Symmetrical O-Possum reviewed at Optical Sloth.

Optical Sloth

"I’m going to need to develop a new format specifically for Shannon’s books. A cover sample and one sample from inside the comic is fine for most things, but when the comic is only four pages long it almost feels like stealing. This is the story of an opossum who was born with eyes and ears of different sizes. Naturally, this causes resentment and anger in the locals, who immediately try to kill the poor thing. This leads to an elaborate revenge plan from the opossum, and yes this is a lot to pack into such a tiny comic, especially when you consider that the cover is one of the four pages. Shannon also manages to find the time to make fun of Republicans (or morons of all stripes, it depends on your perspective) and make a moral point or two. Good clean fun, probably not more than $.50, and, for whatever it’s worth, it’s a 12 hour comic."

A-Symmetrical O-Possum can be purchased here.

Small Bible in Shiot Crock 14

A re-formated version of Shannon's minicomic Small Bible is featured in the latest Shiot Crock. Small Bible can be purchased here.

Here is a look at what some of the other Shiot Crock contributors had to say about Shannon's comic.

"Good stuff all around. Pages 4 and 5 are top-notch. Well drawn, well lettered, well composed, and interesting to look at. Excellent." -eric

"Great stuff. Your art is the best I’ve seen from you. This seems to be a project you care a lot about. As a Christian, I’m glad to see you taking the Bible and it’s message seriously and do it some justice. I enjoy your lack of cynicism." -Barry Rodges

"I read it all. Promised Mom I’d go to church this week ---- Done! Thought you did a great job capturing the time period in your art. Lots of detail. Did you draw these for anything in particular? Weren’t you afraid the Crock would explode into flames with this inside?" -Karen Lucas

"I like the use of tones, etc. That flying faceless character is very evocative." -David Robertson

"I've looked it over, brilliant drawings and compositions, but I'm suspending reading the thing until I can get a bible and cross reference these stories." - M. Campos

"The art is the best S.S. I've ever seen. Those cute little family comics never prepared me for this." -Klopner

Occasional Superheroine reads Shannon's mincomics.

Valerie D'Orazio has posted some nice comments about my minicomics. Valerie said, "What I think is so important about books like yours is that they *are* real. They come from a real place. And as such, they have more of the ability to touch other people's lives than a whole stack of the latest offerings from the Diamond catalog." You can read the rest of the note at Occasional Superheroine. Thanks Val!

Here is the complete letter:

Hi Shannon,

Thanks so much for dropping me this note; your words are encouraging, and give me a lot to think about.

I wanted to also apologize for taking so long to sit down an read your mini-comics until now. I appreciated very much the fact that you took the time to send them to me. To be frank, the last several months -- oh heck, I would say ever since MoCCA Art Fest in the Spring -- have been really really crazy for me. I put too much on my plate, and I also was developing concerns and questions regarding my blog and my role in comics.

I had seen hostility to my blog radically increase -- though I still had a lot of readers and fans. But the hostility got to the point where I was receiving not only death threats but had people I hardly knew obsessively follow my blog and tear it apart on a regular basis on other forums. It got really tired, and took up too much of my time. Coupled with that was an increasing pressure to be more mainstream, to "network," to angle myself in a certain way. Marvel never asked me to do that, for which I am grateful. But the pressure was there from certain places, including simply myself.

And I just burned out from all of it.

I believe life is short -- even if you are relatively long-lived, life is still short. All we really have is our integrity, and our ability to touch other people's lives for the better. We touch other people's lives by being true. We can never touch lives by being fake, or using false sentiment. The problem I have with some mainstream comics is that the writers are either just mechanically providing want the readers want (or editorial dictate demands), or they are so overworked that even with the very best of intentions, some of their books by necessity get phoned in. What gets produced are books that don't make people think, that simply retread the same tropes over and over again.

What I think is so important about books like yours is that they *are* real. They come from a real place. And as such, they have more of the ability to touch other people's lives than a whole stack of the latest offerings from the Diamond catalog.

To an extent, I think the comic companies realize this whole thing about *realness*. They want to achieve again that rawness that Frank Miller had on Daredevil and Alan Moore had on Watchmen. But look what happened to these two artists, after 25+ years in this industry. They both ended up hating passionately mainstream comics. One continued to take their paychecks and piss all over their properties in spite, and one retreated in disgust. I think both endings are sad. I don't think they were necessary, but I understand where they came from.

It's only realness that will redeem and prolong this industry. Yes, the backlist provided by Miller and Moore is lucrative. But what are the new classics -- you know, *real* classics, not the "instant" classics that are proclaimed from comic book covers. "The Dark Knight," to an extent, was *real*. But the inevitable clones of "Dark Knight," both in the movies and on the comic stands, will probably not be. Will we see the stands clogged with this sort of stuff? Will this be another situation like in the 1990s, where there was so much prefab soulless stuff?

That's why it's important that you continue to create your comics. Not just for your own satisfaction and well-being, but because without that spark that comic creators like you provide -- hundreds of you, from your homes, from the hearth of your own deepest creative intentions -- this industry would become inbred, banal, and ultimately irrelevant.

Again, thanks so much for reading the blog, and for sending me the mini-comics. I read all of them during lunch, and enjoyed them very much


Best,
Val

Comic Book Haters Indie Spotlight Video Podcast

Comic Book Haters Indie Spotlight: Shannon Smith from The Comic Book Haters on Vimeo.

Small Bible Reviewed by Sequart.

By Rob Clough at Sequart:

This is a clever mini that's about points of view and description. Taking key portions of the Old Testament, Smith quotes extensively from Stephen's Defense in the Book of Acts, then quotes the original scripture, then provides an illustration--all in just 9 pages. It's a clever comic that's both a straightforward depiction of an event, and a commentary as an interpretation of an interpretation of an event that may or may not have happened--but has enormous importance. Joann Sfar's Rabbi character in THE RABBI'S CAT described Judaism as different from Western (Hegelian) thought, which is thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The history of Jewish thought, he explained, is thesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis, and so on. This mini is another step in the argument, providing a visual interpretation of the events that is action-oriented on nearly every page. An angel dramatically swoops in to prevent Abraham from sacrificing Isaac; Moses gets a magic glowing staff from god that cures snake bites; various epic battles are fought. Smith gets across the quite visceral experience of reading the Old Testament, a tact that is quite different from the purposes of either Stephen or the original Torah. It's quite a clever little project.

Small Bible is on sale here.

Small Bible reviewed by Optical Sloth

By Whitey at Optical Sloth:

Who needs to read all 920 clunky pages of the Old Testament when you could just go and read 9 pages of highly condensed mini comic? As someone who had the bright idea to read the Bible over the last summer I really wasn't sure what to expect here, but Shannon does manage to nail the high points. A brief synopsis of the relevant passage, a quote and an image later and you get the idea of things. Best of all there's no axe to grind here, no moral viewpoint he's pushing, just good old Bible stories. Bits in here include Joseph (you know, the guy with the technicolor dreamcoat), Moses trying to convince people of his veracity, and God being a general dick to his followers who doubted even a little bit, which seemed to happen a lot back then. Oh, and there's also the bit about the ass, but I don't want to spoil it. It's a fun comic for everybody, nothing to offend the overly religious types and it's pretty informative for the rest of us pagans.

Small Bible on sale here.

The Awesome Possum in Shiot Crock 12 Version 2

From the Shiot Crock 12 Version 2 Review Thread: My submission was A-Symmetrical O-Possum.

"My favorite. I love how you cram in as much pop culture/comics references as you can. This is just plain fun. Acme Novelty Soduko. Brilliant. What do you ink with? I’d try something else, and slow down. Reading this, I get the feeling that you are so into drawing and writing this that you let small things like the art go to the wayside. This is good, but it could be great!"

Three one pagers in Shiot Crock 13.

Here are some comments on my three pages in Shiot Crock 13 from the reveiw thread.

"I can relate --Nice pages, Shannon. "

"So YOU killed rock-n-rol! These strips are great. I think the only stuff I've seen from you is your Crock 11 submission, and this is very different. I'd like to see them in color. And I have to be somewhat of a hypocrite here. I know in Hunter's review, I said I didn't like auto bio, but I have to admit that if it is kept in this short and sweet format, I could grow to like it. It's funny you reference Kochalka's work in the last one. I hate auto bio, but I buy everything he does. I really love his art style, but in his diary strips, it is the format that keeps me interested. These strips are like them in the fact that they know where to start, and where to end. They are perfectly paced and funny. Good job. "

"Nice Shannon, again another great indy set. I especially like Daddy Don't Know Nothin'. I think it would be a very nice regular strip, in print or on the web."

"No comments other than I liked this material plenty. "

A-Symmetrical O-Possum in Shiot Crock 12

Here are some comments from the review thread for the Shiot Crock 12 project. My submission was A-Symmetrical O-Possum.

"Fantastic. Don't write off the low quality production as being related to the story. Funny, inane, semi-relevant. "

"This was thought provoking. That fact that it’s a 12-hour comic made it fun on its own, but add to it the edginess – socially unacceptable, politically incorrect and (usually) nonovert (okay that’s not a word, but that’s what I’m sticking with) ways of getting even….funny as shit…but sad. Got ya goin’ – made ya pissed. Whatever. I liked it. Funny as shit…now I’m just being redundant. "

"Retarded, but funny."

"Quite awesome."

Phillip Henry 1 Reviewed by Optical Sloth

Optical Sloth
Reviewed by Whitey
Phillip Henry Foldy #1 (a.k.a. 25 cent Funny)
It's the origin story of Phillip! Oops, looks like I read the two shorties (this one is 4 pages as well) out of order. This is the story of how exactly Phillip came to leave Shannon's school in the third grade and, oddly enough, this one also deals a bit with boobs. It also makes me wonder a whole bunch about who Phillip grew up to be, assuming, as always, that he's a real person and not just a construct for the story. Either way, he's a great character. This goes into (brief) detail about Phillip going cuckoo bananas to try to fit in, or possibly just to get by. We learn that Phillip was a Wonder Woman fanatic, and there's no way in the world I'm ruining the punchline to this one. Again, what's not to like about a funny 25 cent comic?

Reviewed by Sequart

Sequart
Reviewed by Rob Clough
There's a bunch of micro-minis in this batch, with several 4-page minis detailing a wild schoolboy from Smith's childhood and a vengeful possum. One of them was a 12-hour comic and they all have a tossed-off, disposable feel to them. A more substantive entry is BRUSH AND PEN, a stylish mini that pins its effectiveness on how Smith portrays its characters. The main character is an anthropomorphic pen named Clicky and it concerns his travails with his wife, a beautiful but "high-maintenance" brush. The story leads up to the two of them having the writing implement version of having sex: dipping into an inkwell and drawing on fresh sheets of paper. There's a great panel where Brush dips her head into the ink and flings her head back, ink spraying everywhere. It's a genuinely sensuous image that leads to a clever sequence where the two characters express their passion on the page, with the accumulated ink leading to a blackout (quite literally). Smith's playful figures remind me a bit of Steve Lafler's work. This mini had modest ambitions but fulfilled them admirably, and I'm curious to see what else Smith can do.

Phillip 1 & 2 Reviewed by Comicreaders

Comicreaders
Reviewed by Chad Boudreau
Shannon Smith sent us two four-page shorteys featuring a kid named Philip. He's one of those odd kids from the elementary schoolyard. You know the kind of kid I'm talking about. Every school has at least one or two. The paste eater, the kid who likes to be naked, the kid who had to wear a helmet to school, you know, the real oddest duck in the pond. That's the kind of kid Phillip was. He liked to staple his own fingers, he liked lewd limericks, he liked to sneak into the girls' bathroom, and he loved Linda Carter / Wonder Woman. It was the latter, Shannon Smith reminisces in this biographical tale, which caused Philip to latch his little 6th grader hands on to the bosom of his black haired, curvaceous teacher.
These two little mini comics are plainly drawn and heavy in text, but enjoyable nonetheless, if only for the fact it will turn your mind to memories of the strange kids that populated your own schoolyard.

Brush and Pen reviewed by Breakdowns

Breakdowns.
Reviewed by Christopher Allen.
Brush and Pen by Shannon Smith is a minicomic about Click the Ballpoint Pen and his wife, an unnamed brush. We see Clicky bemoan his short life, financial pressures and other woes to his philandering buddy Q, the Quill Pen. He gets home and the wife gives him a hard time, taking out her cabin fever on him. Smith has a very modest story to tell here, but it is a story, and though he doesn’t do a very good job of making this world seem real (pens work as they work for us in our world, but somehow they also live in a city, have homes, bills, etc., his dialogue is pretty amusing once the double-entendres start coming—something I can appreciate. This leads logically, yet still surprisingly, to a classy but impassioned love scene for the couple. It’s silly but romantic and bound to make you smile. One problem, though—drawing Pen in pen and Brush with brush is a good idea on, um, paper, but it unfortunately makes Pen look thin and flat as a character.

Phillip Henry 2 (Boob Goblin) reviewed by Optical Sloth

Optical Sloth
Reviewed by Whitey.
Now come on, isn't that just about the best cover you've ever seen? It's even better once you read the story and it's really not even meant to be salacious. OK, it's meant to be slightly salacious, granted. But this is the story of a boy named Phillip, who gets in trouble in third grade and doesn't come back to the school of the narrator (presumably Shannon) until sixth grade. At that time this perennial troublemaker hasn't had much of a change of heart of his previous and now he's dealing with the onset of puberty. I don' want to give the whole thing away, as this is only a 4 page shortie (and you're already seeing half of it in samples) but it's funny and only a quarter, so who can beat that?

Ruben Bolling on My Dad the Stormtrooper

"I liked your My Dad the Stormtrooper. Nice paunch. Keep going." - Ruben Bolling of Tom the Dancing Bug.
(This was actually from an old email I had posted on the old website. I'm moving some old reviews here as I get ready to delete the old website.)

Brush and Pen in Shiot Crock 11

Here are some comments about Brush and Pen from the Shiot Crock 11 review thread at The Comics Journal's message board.

"Hilarious. Freaking hilarious. At first I was wondering why bother using the pens as a metaphor for people if they were the same, but once Q suggested that Clicky find a job with a compulsive clicker or lucky pen, I realized what I was in for. Funny stuff all the way through. Bravo. I'm a sucker for a happy ending too. I'll be hitting your site too, looking for more of your material."

"Very sweet story. I like it when the underdog gets the beautiful woman…and it all works out. Sex is everything in a successful relationship. The ‘black’ page tells it all. Perfect, precise ‘drawing.’ Love it. Loved the play on words…referencing the writing utensils."

"Page 18, last panel: anyone who can make a brush look sexy is okay by me. Girlfrined like this one, so that's a good endorsement."

"Very cool, very clever. Will we ever see them again?"

"I loved the small format. I miss seing minis that are this long, too. Most people think that "mini" means they can get away with only putting like 5 cartoons in a book (see above). I really liked the story. These characters are characters I could read several books of. They are interesting. I think they look a bit like you are trying to draw them really quickly. I don't mean to say that your drawings are bad, but that they could be better. Also, as you have mentioed, backgrounds would make this look a heck of a lot better. Don't fall short on the next one because this seems like the kinda thing that will either be talked about because of the time you put into it, or it will be tossed aside as a "cute" story because of the time you didn't pput into it. I also liked the ending. Thanks for making sex clean again, as that is something I haven't seen in a long time. Brush and Pen really love each other, they don't just hump each other..."

"I like the lovemaking scene. The different lines they make are a good analogy for personalities merging. The story reads well. It’s cute overall."

"I think Brush and Pen is a very clever idea. It's again, a fully thought-out world for the characters to inhabit, and I enjoyed it a lot. The writing and the pacing of the story is first rate. Great fun."

More about Brush and Pen and Shiot Crock here.

Tony Millionaire reads Phillip Henry

Tony Millionaire, author of Maakies, Sock Monkey and my favorite Jar Jar Binks story ever... was kind enough to send a note about the Phillip Henry comic I did. Tony writes, "I love the Phillip Henry story! The clunky art goes well with school stories, makes it seem more real, like somebody you knew in school drew it."
www.maakies.com

Brush and Pen reviewed by The Comics Journal

Dogsbody
Review by Austin English.
This comic has characters who are ballpoint pens, characters who are Sharpies and characters who are brushes. Each character is drawn with that particular tool. It's an interesting idea, but a frustrating one. Smith draws pretty well in brush, but not so well in ballpoint pen or Sharpie. The potential for an idea like this one lies in how interesting style contrasts would happen with different mediums, but that doesn't really happen here. You get very nice brush drawings, and really mediocre ballpoint pen drawings that dilute the brushwork.
But there is an artist in Smith. The brush drawings feature interesting expressions and figure movement. I want to see Smith do more comics in brush, and fewer panels where two characters sit stiffly and look at each other blankly with no backgrounds to distract us from the same stiff arrangement, panel after panel. Smith knows how to make an interesting facial composition. The next task is to make an interesting panel composition.