A Caliber Christmas #1

Finding this 1989 Christmas special was quite the coup. This black

and white one-shot from the pretty much defunct Caliber Comics

featured a story starring punk-goth superhero, The Crow. Anything

starring this character is quite collectible (I.E. rare) and thus quite

expensive. 

A Caliber Christmas books for $75 and that's not graded! Yet I happened to find a

very good condition issue for only $1! That's a potential profit of 7500%,

if I wanted to sell it. And that was a very big IF...

One of my key collections in my comic book collection is my holiday comics. Be

it Halloween, Christmas or Arbor Day. If it's a book of sequential art about a

special time of year- I WANT IT! Clearly, if I needed to sell off some of my

collection,my holiday books would be one of the last things I would sell.

But $75 can buy more comic books! I really needed to know if this book was

worth keeping or not. 

There's about a dozen stories in this giant sized special. With the exception of

the Crow, the other vignettes are of franchises and/or characters that I am not at

all familiar with at all. Though you might not know anything about these figures,

all of the stories are clearly set during Christmastime. For example, with the

Baker Street tale, you'll see what it's like to celebrate the holidays with the

homeless and less fortunate. Ironically, I thought that the story starring Crow

was the weakest of this entire bunch.

One thing that surprised me about this comic book was how religious it was.

Most Christmas specials these days tend to stay away from Christianity; to

the point of not even using the word 'Christmas' in the title! But at least 2

stories talk positively about Christ. Plus there was one very intriguing story

set in what is called the Aniverse, was a brilliant anthropomorphic allegory

of the Christmas Story. 

But you are quickly reminded at points that this is a typical comic book.

There's a very cheesecake pin-up in the center of the book. And that back

page splash between a cat(?) and one of Santa's reindeer was pretty risque.

And that gory but very twisty Deadworld story! Wow! I actually want to find

more from this series!

Begrudgingly, I must say that I loved this book. I guess I'm going to have to

find my $75 elsewhere. Because when it comes to A Caliber Christmas:

It's a keeper!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus

   Tonight's Halloween themed comic is a from a grab bag. (I know, but I just love grab bags.) This 1994 one-shot by Caliber Press seeks to recount the terrifying events of Mary Shelley's original novel without any of the trappings of Hollywood. I had to read Frankenstein for a college course years ago. While I do not remember that book verbatim, I would have to say that the editors and writer, Eric Johnson, of this comic did a pretty good job at that goal. One thing I feel that they failed at was the art.
    First of all, the painted cover by Vincent Locke was fantastic. There's actually an ad in the back of the comic for an autograph lithograph of the cover image and if it wasn't 22 years old, I'd actually try to send away for one. But the interior art wasn't so great.
    I try really hard to be fair with artists. They do something amazing with their hands that I could only dream of. But I have carpal tunnel and they toil away for hours/days/weeks at a project doing something that would have me in tears if I tried for more than 5 minutes. But something with this artwork was off.
    The characters looked static. It reminded me of the artwork used in textbooks for 5th graders. There's not much depth and with such thin ink lines, not much of a 3-D quality either. Plus the Monster and all of the females in this story's hair is thick and tubular like it's made of those foam noodles you take to the pool. The scenery wasn't much better- except for the opening and closing scenes set in the frigid Arctic Circle. Those are actually pretty sweet.
     Not a terrible read, (plus it's a little creepy fun) especially for something that I got as a total surprise and probably for only about 50 cents or so.

    Worth Consuming

    Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.