REVIEW: THE ESSENTIAL BOOTLEG COMICS & STORIES by MEL TAYLOR

 

The Essential Bootleg Comics & Stories
by Mel Taylor
illustrated by R.G. Taylor
Studio Comix Press
2026

review by BK Munn

Because I'm embracing "all things Waterloo," the only new comic I picked up this week was this fluorescent banana yellow (picture doesn't do it justice) collection of fugitive pieces by Mel Taylor and R.G. Taylor. All these short stories are written by Mel Taylor, a local beatnik type, and illustrated by his cousin R.G. Taylor, who comic book fans might recognize as the artist behind the exquisite 1980s series Wordsmith, about a 1930s pulp magazine writer, and a short but beautiful early run on the Sandman Mystery Theatre comic series ("The Brute"). The short stories in this book are polished autobiographical reflections on personal heroes, childhood memories, and being down and out; bite-sized, slice-of-life haikus. The narration is poetic in an unpretentious, quotidian style, and the artwork is on point, with R.G.'s expressive (photo-referenced?) linework getting at the heart of things. I was pleased to learn the cousins grew up in Fergus, Ontario, along the Grand River, where I also spent part of my childhood, and in addition to Mel's memories of reading Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comics as a kid, there are two short strips about the local comic shops in the K-W region, the long-gone Now & Then Books, where I bought the first issue of Wordsmith back in the 80s, and the shop where I bought this book, Carry-On Comics.

REVIEW: PALOOKAVILLE #25 BY SETH

Palookaville #25

by Seth

(Drawn & Quarterly, April 2026)

review by BK Munn

The new issue of Palookaville is a master class in comics page design, pacing, and letting a story breathe. The latest issue of this long running hardcover "comic book" from Seth features another gorgeous chapter of the graphic memoir "Nothing Lasts" and a new short story about forgotten painter, "Owen Moore," originally serialized in The Walrus magazine, presented here along with the prelim sketch version of the story from Seth's notebooks; a rare glimpse behind the covers! More process stuff includes a middle section of photographs and drawings detailing the creation of his life-size sculpture "Living Room Suite" which I drive by everyday outside the Art Gallery of Guelph. Fascinating!

I talked with Seth recently about comics page design and he compared the narratively driven, almost stream-of-consciousness/speed-of-thought panel transitions of Kirby to those of Kurtzman's more laboured, thoughtful triptychs balanced with single long panels, praising both, but noting his own approach to rhythm and beats hews closer to Kurtzman's. He joked about a  frequent Joe Matt maxim ("The next panel could be anything!") and talked about his own formal conservatism and dedication to page design and thinking about the page (and double pages) as a storytelling unit, in comparison to both Matt and Chester Brown, noting that Brown still draws each panel individually and pastes them down, with seemingly only the vaguest design in mind. Seth also contrasted Chris Ware's information dense pages with Dan Clowes' Ditko-esque simplicity and grids, and confessed that the pure cartoonist ideal of "show, don't tell" that Chester still sticks to has slowly given way in his own work to more and more exposition and narrative text. All very interesting comments to keep in mind when reading "Nothing Lasts" which is a heady, mesmerizing combination of attacks: time jumps, silent panels, wordy panels, narration, differently-sized panels, and a relaxed decompressed rhythm that lets the pages breathe. Really, a master-class in the potentials of comics page design.