Presents and Presents Noir Review.

 Presents / Presents Noir

Released October 2021

An anthology of individual creator stories by new to the scene publisher Shane Syddall’s ComX. Shane along with Gary Deller’s revived REVERIE is sparking a bit of renaissance in the local comic scene.

Presents goes a long way in pushing this brief forward.

Firstly, I have to congratulate Shane on the brilliant quality of the product. Great paper stock, vibrant printing and colours and delivered with a great amount of thought to how the product could be hurt in the post. Combine this with the fact that the product consists of two omics at 48 pages apiece. The initial outlay from the original Kickstarter is indeed incredible value. Many have delivered a whole lot less for a whole lot more.

Now back to the comics.

This twin edition release includes seven creators taking on all art/writing/lettering duties and one collaboration.

Launched through Kickstarter in July, digital copies were distributed in September and physical comics in October, pretty much meeting its promised timeline, missing by a month because of the usual CoVid related stuff that we’re going to miss when we have to make excuses when this plague finally goes away.

To coincide with the physical distribution Presents volume 2 has been announced.

As mentioned earlier one edition is full colour and the other black & white titled Noir. Both have noir type elements.

Noir’s (and in my opinion the releases) highlight would have to be  Impulse by Dave Dye. Any new work by Dave is cause for celebration. It scares me to think how popular Dave would be if he had started his comic book career 20 years earlier before he left the army. His artistic style is much suited to the black and white/ pen and

ink brief of the comic, Gilbert Shelton/Dave Sheridan/Robert Crumb come instantly to mind when viewing his work. Dave also has a good grasp on flow and narrative and is one of only two stories in the collection that is a complete tale. A story of unintended tragedy with a nice twist and a very black humour climax.

 Killer Bea by Tony Menzies was the other complete tale but I wasn’t sure if this story was an introduction to the character and future stories or a stand-alone story. Either way, it went a bit too far in driving its story point home and left little to the readers' imagination.

Other stories included in Noir are Bin Kitty by Duncan Pranevicius and the Sword and Sorcery Marathon by Leigh Chalker and Tamara Gayland. 

Moving onto the all colour edition Foes by Peter Wilson kicks off the book with a well-drawn, very funny tale about Aliens and Demons that has a lot happening in it. Which may be its biggest problem. The panel per page count made it difficult for these old eyes. Pages that are that busy, really make for hard reading.

Vivian Jones: Occult Detective by Isaac George is reminiscent of Ryan Lindsay’s Deer Editor as it conveys the right amount of silliness and atmosphere to drive the story forward.

Final Dragon by E.D Kearsley is drawn in the 70s pulp comic style but with a lot more violence and action than was allowed back then. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the core of the story.

In the last story Rob “Spedsy” Lisle’s Frederick Cheloni Turtle Detective drawn in his distinctive style, this tale had its moments but so much was going on that it was obvious that it wasn't going to be resolved. which led to a tad of confusion. I suppose that it’s inevitable in an anthology that has so many continuing stories The good news is unlike most anthologies dependent on Kickstarter funding it looks like a 12-month wait is avoided by ComX pushing forward to produce the next edition in a decent time.

Value and packaging a big fat 10

Content: all up a solid 7.

We’ll see what number 2 has in store.

Presents & Presents Noir are available through www.comx.shop