Week of 4/7/2025
On The Shapes, Sadie answer another letter for her advice column, and it's NURSERY RHYME TIME with The Oves! I give store availability news, and review The Lost Dimension on Sammy the Critic.
The Shapes
A Family Affair
Hush Little Brat
News
Store Updates
While I was protesting in DC last week (up yours if you see this FBI, CIA, or whatever fucking government goons spy around these parts of the web), I dropped The Shapes #5 at Big Planet Comics and Joint Custody a few doors over in the Logan Circle neighborhood. Check both shops out if you like comix and zines!
Sammy the Critic
The Lost Dimension #1 & #2 Review
CW: References to CSA, regular SA, and graphic violence
An impulse reaction to witnessing these front covers might be “what in Nabakov’s knickers is this supposed to be.” It certainly was my reaction when I picked the series up at Fatbottom Books, but I bought it either way due to morbid curiosity, like I do with a lot of transgressive literature. To quell any misgivings without spoiling too much, it’s not ominous in the way you’re probably foreboding, but it is filled with pulsating suspense.
Taking place in the near future (although that has nothing to do with the plot), the first issue opens in an aesthetically retrofuturist diner where three teenage girls are seen drinking boba tea. The girl in the pigtails recounts her father’s violent reaction to her not wearing panties, beating her up and threatening to murder her if she does it again. She gleefully dives into graphic detail of the gruesome ways she would be killed. The two other girls listen with attentive nonchalance. This scene isn’t referenced again, and we have no idea who these girls are, but it sets the tone of the uncanniness to come.
The main character, a girl named Karine, lives with her widowed father in an isolated village area. Karine narrates her experience living with him, initially exhibiting a trusting prepubescent naivete. Not much explicit depravity occurs within #1, but throughout, we see several examples of creepy behavior that would fit right at home with an illustrated listicle of red flags to the average reader (and if it doesn’t, then bless your innocent soul). His pig face only serves to emphasize that. Karine's dad’s personal life outside of his interactions with her is enshrouded in mystery. The contrast between Karine’s innocuous narration, the author Nicolas Le Bault’s deliberately ugly art style, and the dad’s unsettling oddness all create the perfect recipe for psychological horror in a way any of those elements individually would fail to concoct.
By #2, the psychological tension comes to a partial circle as some of our suspicions are confirmed whilst leaving enough ambiguous aspects to keep the reader in suspense throughout. Why is there a girl tied to the basement wall with tentacle growths on her skin? Your guess is as good as mine, but we know it must be germane to Karine’s father in some way, and that’s enough to elicit a scare or a deep sense of agitation because now, we’re left wondering exactly what this man is capable of.
With #3 out after a two-year release gap, now is a better time than ever to read The Lost Dimension series. You can buy issues at the publisher White Rabit Prod’s website.