Not going to lie, really was looking forward to my indy review this week and a lot of them coming up, hell maybe I should just do indy book reviews. But it's exciting for me to share with a large potential audience the incredible work of friends who inspire me to keep pushing forward and bust my book out. A lot of the books that I will be plugging here, I know the creators have been working away for years and I definitely feel like they deserve way much attention and fan attention. So it's with great excitement that today I get to share the work of Dave Bishop! So this one has been a long time coming, and I've got to admit being at fault for being extremely disorganized, still working on that and I plan to keep all things more in order. But I got to meet Dave about two years ago or so, and man, his work is really good! From a very disturbing and psychologically haunting zombie tale in Stranger to some epic out of this world setting in Of Stone and even the underwater thriller, Deep Sea. Dave has created some incredible worlds, as a writer and as an artist you can see it all come to life. One of my personal favourites of his work though, was a very early work of his and it's a short story, simply titled Squirrels. A one shot story on the secret lives of squirrels, and holy f*ck does it get dark really fast, and I love it! I wanted to hit up Squirrels first because I will be looking at all the other books I mentioned earlier as well, so I figured start at the beginning of his work. Not to mention I am blown away at how engaging a short story about squirrels could be.
So off the bat, you don't even have to open the book to start the story, it begins right away on the cover. A squirrel runs onto a road and gets run over, splat, dead. That's odd? Why would it run on the road and accept it's fate, the squirrel stands and looks directly at the oncoming vehicle. It's an acceptance of ones mortality, welcoming the fate of death head on. An acceptance or even a protest if you will, die on your feet instead of living on your knees. And this does add up especially by the end. You end seeing how all the squirrels have a secret society and a certain code of conduct that they must obey or be casts out, which you could directly tie to the world we live in today, your workplace or hell even your family. A world where curiosity is shunned, defiance is punished and jealousy runs rampart. All of these elements take place in this short story in the world of squirrels and holy crap, that's nuts...pun totally intended. As a writer myself, I was blown away by this, here we have a short story that drops all these elements, and it's not like everything is given to you, there are a lot of questions on how that world works and what are the rules. But the concept being that hey, you know how sometimes when you drive down a long road to the city you may happen to run over a squirrel, ever wonder what life that little creature lived? We don't think that, we never ask that. I mean most humans have a "boot to ants" kind of mentality, we just walk where we want and take what we need.
This comic was created as part of the twelve hour comic book challenge, which I've done myself and it's really hard to make a story that makes any sense at all and gives you something. I wanted to try to do the same with Part Timer and I hope it works, but I am bot sure. I was totally inspired by Bishop's work here with Squirrels, his ability to tell a lot with the small amount of space is pretty incredible. And you get a sense of bigger and greater settings in his other books as well, which you will be seeing here as well. The only thing is, I am not sure how many copies of Squirrels are left or even available, being an early work of his and all. But hey you go to a show or convention and find Dave's table, pick up anything that is available. If you are looking for comics that challenge it's readers and tell a deeper story, get his books. And also something that needs to be said, Dave is an absolute blast, so talk with him and get to know him, really really cool guy and one of the many guys working that I look up to.
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| Dave and Ricky working away. |
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