Week of 3/17/2025
This week, debates are all the rage in The Shapes, I have an event announcement, and on Sammy the Critic, review a Taiwanese comic!
The Shapes
Deconstructed Internalization
The Disco D’s
News
PCP Release Party
Next Sunday, Lars is throwing a release party for Purgatory Comics Press’s first book, the Sowing & Reaping anthology, in the Bushwick arcade bar Wonderville. From 3-7 PM, they’ll be vending alongside some other cartoonists who contributed— myself included— who’ll be selling our own merch. Afterwards, it’s afterparty time til late!!
Whether you can’t make it to PIE or are just looking for something to do in Brooklyn on a Sunday, you’ll be in for a good time!
Gutter NYC
Looking for more free stuff to around Bushwick? Thursday that week on April 3, I’ll be doing a live reading of some of The Shapes strips at the comics and animation showcase Gutter starting at 7:30 PM.
Sammy the Critic
Not Ready For Real Life Review
Active in the Taiwanese comics scene since 2014, Ding Pao-Yen’s new short story collection Not Ready for Real Life is the author’s first work to be translated for Anglophone audiences, and after reading it, one might wonder why so.
Graduation & Salmon Roe — Two recent archeology high school graduates decide to relive some memories by spelunking. The girl finds a subterranean lake which she dives into where she discovers a supply of fresh salmon roe. She gives the boy a salmon roe before the story ends with him saying, “Maybe I’ll visit again for the school’s anniversity” as they part ways in the night sky.
Conceptually, there are interesting ideas explored. An archeology high school and a substerrean lake of salmon roe together read like a backdrop to a work of speculative fiction. Alas, said concepts aren’t entertained deeply beyond a staging level, and the characterizations are blank slates.
Part Time Job — This story can be summed up as Neon Evangelion Evangelion abridged. We have a girl who works part-time as a mecha fighter which winds up injuring her eye after an accident during a fight. Instead of being scarred by daddy issues and sexual confusion, however, she considers quitting her job, pleading with her friend to let her work at his family’s eel restaurant. There’s a tad of humor in the conclusion, but otherwise, features the same issues present in “Graduation & Salmon Roe.”
Monster in the Rain — Where the previous two comics are thematically restrained, “Monster in the Rain” is a visual abreaction of said restraint where all the surreal motifs unleash in eerie ecstasy as we follow a young man taking a stroll in the tempestuous floods. Scribble shading pervades throughout, emphasizing the imagery’s chaotic, foreboding nature full of concoctions of a phantasmagoric and vaguely technologically dystopian persuasion.
While much is left to the reader’s interpretation, this is a deliberate literary choice, as Pao-Yen clearly has all the narrative elements set, unlike previously where the concepts are underprepared.
The Last Meal — A hungry human guy and an emotionally hungry vampire gal are on a date while avoiding the nebulous figure Professor G. While the plot here is the most straightforward and fleshed-out, the ending’s ambiguous implications didn’t leave enough on a thematic level to contemplate on.
Overall, Ding Pao-Yen is a very capable artist whose mind is a treasure trove of ideas, but the trove mostly remains ajar, giving us only a partial scope of the radiating potential that lies within, which can feel tantalizing as a reader. “Monster in the Rain” is the outlier that elevates Not Ready for Real Life from just being meh to pretty decent. I look forward to seeing more translation of Pao-Yen’s work.
You can preorder the book on Glacier Bay Books’ website.
Thank you Glacier Bay Books and Paradise Systems for this ARC in exchange for an honest review