Boom Box Mix Tape 2015 Reviews 

Boom! Box Celebrates Their Year with the “2015 Mix Tape” [Review]

By | December 17th, 2015
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Boom! Box, the “experimental and gleeful” imprint of Boom! Studios, celebrates their second year with another oversized collection of comics. With the success of “Lumberjanes” and “Giant Days,” Boom! Box has been able to expand their roster and it’s super chill to have a brief overview of all the stuff the line launched this year.

Written by Rosemary Valerio-O’Connell, John Allison, Kate Leth, Kelly Thompson, John Kovalic, Jon Chad, Adam X. Vass, Shannon Watters, Rob DenBleyker, Dave McElfatrick, Kris Wilson, Madeline Flores, Kendra Wells

Illustrated by Rosemary Valerio-O’Connell, John Allison, Matt Cummings, Savanna Ganucheau, John Kovalic, Jon Chad, Adam X Vass, Carey Pietsch, Rob DenBleyker, Dave McElfatrick, Kris Wilson, Madeline Flores, Trillian Gunn, Kendra Wells

What’s to Love: If you’re loving the comics being released under the BOOM! Box imprint, delve into a world of more of the same stories! From the wacky to the touching, you’ll never know what you’re going to get. Here’s a hint: brand-new Lumberjanes, Giant Days, Munchkin, Cyanide & Happiness, Power Up, and the debut of upcoming BOOM! Box title Bad Mask!

What It Is: We reached out to a bunch of our favorite creators with one mission in mind: to bring original, unconventional characters and stories to life. The Mix Tape is an eclectic collection of stories based on characters that are anything but your average lot. Narwhal Janitors and Urban Cowboys are just the tip of these stories that are best described as “off the beaten track.”

Anthologies are strange to talk about critically: you’re not really observing the creators of the stories, but the curators of the thing. Individually, contributions might be fine, even something that you might really enjoy, but when surrounded by a bunch of other stories with different tones or ambitions, they easily might lose any of their luster and come off awkwardly. Some of the stories won’t have as much of an impact as other ones. Others might just vanish under the weight of stronger stories. Each contribution makes up part of the heart and soul of the whole, but I’m not about to give eleven different scores for the 2015 “Boom! Box Mix Tape.” Ultimately, what we’re judging is whether the anthology book felt like it was well put together, that it just wasn’t thrown in and mixed at the last second by some uncaring editor focused on where ads go.

The 2015 “Boom! Box Mix Tape” is a much stronger collection of materials than their offerings last year. Like the last mix, this volume features a handful of supplementary adventures from their major ongoings. “Munchkin,” “Lumberjanes,” and “Cyanide & Happiness” reappear, joined by the newer series, “Help Us! Great Warrior,” “Giant Days,” “Power Up,” and a preview of one of their next upcoming series, “Bad Mask.” Tyson Hesse’s “Diesel” is absent from these pages, and I hope that’s not indicative of that title’s fate: it was one of the strongest series Boom! Box released this year. Rounding out the collection are gag stories like ‘Narwhal Janitor,’ ‘Postmarked: Urgent,’ ‘Tip o’ the Hat,’ and ‘Misunderstood Haunted House.’ Overall, it’s a wide and diverse collection of comics, and there’s bound to be something you enjoy.

As for the stories themselves: the “Power Up” story and ‘Misunderstood Haunted House’ were the weakest of the bunch. “Power Up”‘s entry felt more like a deleted scene, with a lot of setup and not really any punchline. ‘Misunderstoond Haunted House’ felt overwritten, like it was elbowing me the whole time, BoJack-style. ‘Tip o’ the Hat’ conjures a couple good chuckles when it juxtaposes the cowboy in the modern world visuals, but the short goes on too long. Vess’s art is cool to look at, though.

Wisely, most of the creators don’t try to go too big for the stories, and we’re given a lot of gags and fast jokes. Madeline Flores’s “Help Us! Great Warrior” story, which is probably my favorite of the bunch, and ‘Postmarked: Urgent’ bit keep it simple and expressive, and the punchlines work for the kind of jokes they’re telling. The “Munchkin” story lands better this time around than a lot of the other “Munchkin” stories, even though the metafictional setup is a little offputting as the comic begins. “Cyanide and Happiness” does it’s thing. And ‘Narwhale Janitor’ is…just what it says it is.

Continued below

“Lumberjanes” gambles that we’re already familiar with the characters if we’re reading this collection, and it turns in a heart-warming and charming short. John Allison returns to draw his “Giant Days” characters and there’s this different tone and feel to them as he doesn’t have an artist to bounce ideas off of, but it’s fine. The centerpiece of the anthology is this preview for the upcoming “Bad Mask,” about this group of kids who identify with a villain than the town’s local superhero, and it definitely serves to drum up interest. The method it was delivered, like a journal blog, was a novel way to deliver a sort of found footage feel to the narrative.

The collection itself is awesome. The oversized format, the thicker paper, the pink flyleaf and patterns, it all feels like this was something the Boom! Studios people were proud to put out. One thing that made me happy: page numbers. So many anthologies like to put page numbers in their table of contents, but never actually any numbers on the page (*”Island”*, *every DC collection*). Their presence, unobtrusive and almost ignorable, was super welcome.

Boom! Box has grown as a publisher over this past year, enough that you know to expect a passionate, fun, and emotionally-driven story every time you see their masthead. The 2015 “Boom! Box Mix Tape” is a nice retrospective of many of their titles this past year, and, as a collection, is a huge improvement over last year’s mix. Shannon Watters and the rest of her crew did well in putting this anthology together.

Final Verdict: 7.8 – there’s bound to be a story you like


Matthew Garcia

Matt hails from Colorado. He can be found on Twitter as @MattSG.

EMAIL | ARTICLES