Reich #3 by Elijah Brubaker
Reich is both beautifully written and drawn by Elijah Brubaker. His unique storytelling style provides one of the first and few literate biographies in comic book form. We've planned it as a quarterly series from Sparkplug.
"This is the start of a non fiction biography of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. For those that don't know about him, he lived between 1897 and 1957. To escape the Nazi's he left Europe for the United States. He then threw away his credibility with some wonky ideas about an energy called "orgone" and contraptions designed to capture it and use it to cure people's health problems. The US Government put him in prison and burned much of his books.
I like the writing of the book, both the flow of the story and dialogue is just fine. The creator does take some liberties with the facts but he mentions which ones in the back of the book. Also in the back he says he's inspired by Chester Brown's Louis Riel and that influence is pretty obvious. The ending of the issue is weird as it ends on a cliff hanger but you get the feel this is a full fledge graphic novel that just got chopped into an issue at this point.
If your an independent reader this artwork should fit with your tastes. It's unique as the creator draws everybody with over sized heads. A variety of perspectives are used to liven up the story and they work. I should say quite a few pages there are little to no backgrounds. Some of the shading, identifying a light source is a little wonky on a page here and there.
When this is put together into a graphic novel I'm sure it will sell to some of those that enjoyed Louis Riel. As it is, I give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars."
Reviewing Reich #1, Jamie Coville at Collector Times
$3.00 and postage (24 interior pgs, 6" x 9", color cover with black and white interiors)
To read a sample from the book click on the cover or here, please.