Week of 6/2/2025
On the return of The Shapes, Bob is back and has a job! I announce a boatload of evens on the news section, and on Sammy the Critic, I review Memoh's fantasy comic Dominion
The Shapes
Bob’s 1st Day of Work 1-2
And for Pride Month, a relevant rerun!
Vanilla is the New Rainbow
News
Store Updates
The Shapes #5 is available at Human Relations and Troubled Sleep in Brooklyn. While the regular size editions of The Shapes #2-5 are out of print at the moment (Minibooks are still available!), Domino Books still has copies on their website.
Event Announcements
I’m back in Florida, which means I also have a ton of markets to vend at in the dandy month of June!
Tampa Local Market
From 5-9 PM today, I’ll be at Mastry’s Brewing Co in St. Pete Beach selling comix, greeting cards, prints, and stickers.
Daydream June Art Market
The following Saturday, I’ll be part of St. Pete’s art walk tabling at Daydream Shop from 5-9 PM.
Dharma Art Market
You can catch me at Dharma Kava Lounge’s monthly art market in Largo on June 17 from 7-11 PM. Besides local vendors, there’s a mighty good stand outside that cooks up some of the most finger-licking, tasty Southern food and cheesecake!
Hey Market!
I’m back to doing Cafe Hey’s Hey Market! again! Their June 21 show will be from 7-11 PM on 1540 N Franklin St. There’ll be a stamp rally! More on that as the event date comes closer.
Sammy the Critic
Dominion Vol. 1 Review
Desmond Oakenhart is a Blessed individual (essentially someone with divinely bestowed powers) who aspires to be a guardsman, going against his family’s wishes to work for their business (what exactly said business specializes in is beyond me). However, all of these plans shift as he is forced to collaborate with the notorious arsonist Pasha to solve a series of murders.
Pacing and plot-wise, I found this opening installment to be uneven, to put it curtly. It begins with a compelling prologue that serves as a hook while briefly introducing the deuteragonist, Pasha, who says in a scene of carnage, “They were wrong—and they were right. That day, I died”, after the perpetrators leave their victims for dead. When the story officially starts, we see Desmond doing some guard training before returning home to his family, which is where one of the main sources of conflict is initiated. While these expository elements are well-executed, it’s the plot threads that follow that leave more to be desired, the family business being one. Throughout the entire volume, we know Desmond’s family are wealthy entrepreneurs with questionable practices. However, beyond them wanting Desmond to balance ledgers, the exact nature of what they do is left very unclear. There are several contexts where such ambiguity can be amusing or negligible at worst, but for a book where that aspect is so significant to the character conflict, I feel like readers should have at least a general idea of what the family business is.
Furthermore, Dominion’s worldbuilding overcompensated for loose threads with your infodumping, namely four pages of abstract imagery and narration. While it’s far from the most egregious example of that trope, it could have benefited from dropping details about its worldbuilding throughout the volume.
Where the comic’s strongest qualities lie is in the characters. In the relatively brief time we’re introduced to the Oakenhart family early on, we get a glimpse of each member’s general demeanor, including Desmond’s more supportive older sister Abigail, the snarky younger sister Catherine, and the matriarchal socialite Anora, to name a few. Of all the characters, however, my personal favorite would be Pasha, the observational, sharp-thinking, and resourceful vigilante whose mysterious traits make her all the more interesting. Pasha and Desmond’s at odds characteristics make for an enchanting opposites attract dynamic, which, judging from the one-off illustrations on the book’s last pages, is the direction the author Memoh wants to advance them in.
Overall, despite uneven pacing and worldbuilding, Dominion Vol. 1 is a decent debut that shows a lot of promise, especially with its two main characters, whose engaging dynamic leaves me eager to see where Memoh goes next in the subsequent installments. You can order the book on the Wizard in a Can collective website.
Thank you, Memoh, for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.