Monday, 8 October 2018

COMIC REVIEW - PEDANTIC STAN!





Title: PEDANTIC STAN: THE COMICS FAN!
Format: A5 LANDSCAPE. COLOUR COVERS B/W INTERIORS
Length: 16 pages
Price: £2.00
Publisher: LEW STRINGER COMICS
Creators: JOHN FREEMAN & LEW STRINGER
Available from: http://lewstringer.com/page7.htm
Review:
Lew is in the process of reprinting all his creator owned work at the moment. We’ve already had Brickman, Derek The Troll and Combat Colin and now we have his strip from the early 1990s comic fanzine, Speakeasy – Pedantic Stan: The Comics Fan!
The Stan strips are a little different from some of his other work because they mostly take the form of newspaper strip-style stories, happening in a single row of three or so pictures (rather than the more usual page long strips.) I’ve always been impressed with writers that can get some sort of humour and narrative out of such a short form of storytelling time and time again, so I enjoyed this enormously.
This strip really is a time-capsule, bringing comics fandom from a bygone era back to us. In satirising fanboys, comic conventions, comics creators and the art of collecting in the 1990s, we can now look back and see how much things have changed in the last twenty-five years. For any comic collectors of a certain age this is all too familiar. Who of us can say that there isn’t a little ‘Stan’ in us?
The only thing in the strips that I would quibble over is the portrayal of all comic dealers as money grubbing.
Not only is this a great historical document, but it’s also very funny! There was one moment in particular when I laughed like a drain for a good long while! I won’t ruin it for you here, but it was worth the £2 cover price all on it’s own.
So why not treat yourself to a copy of PSTCF today? It’s like experiencing a UKCAC from 1990 all over again!

John A. Short

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