Portals #1 by Nic Carcieri and friends.
20 page black and white minicomic with color covers.
Why describe this minicomic to you myself when I can just quote the author's note that came with the book? "Portals is a self-published bi-montly anthology book containing four of my orignal stories." Well, sort of. My problem with this book, and with a lot of minicomics in this style, is that it does not really contain stories or even bits long enough to be considered episodes of stories. What you get is more like a collection of trailers for stories. This happens a lot in minicomics and especially in books like this that are created by a writer using multiple artists. I know how the trailer comic happens as I've done them myself. When you are a writer that loves comics and wants to make them you might be able to get several artists to knock out four to eight pages for you but it's hard to get an artist to knock out a full twenty-two page comic without putting up some money. And even if they would do it for firee, it's hard to impose on a friend like that. So, you ask around, meet folks at conventions and online and the next thing you know you've got a bunch of comics trailers and you make a book out of them. It's not a bad thing. I would just prefer one solid story or at least something that feels like a solid episode of a story to the trailer comic collection.
The four pieces in this book range from three to seven pages each. It is hard to review Nic Carcieri's writing in this book because the stories never get going but it feels like the writing was learned from movie trailers and comic books. Each story is from a different genre so I respect the ambition of the book but what I see here feels more like a person doing an impersonation of those genres and less like someone telling a story that really means something.
This is a good looking book but there just is not enough of any one piece to sink your teeth into. And it's not that I don't like anthology books. My suggestion would be to slow down the publication shceduling goals and focus on having longer episodes. Then it would feel a lot more like a winning issue of Heavy Metal and less like a collection of trailers.
Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith
Tags: nic carcieri, reviews
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