This month I am posting a review of a different self-published comic book each day for the rest of the month! Here is an archive of the books reviewed so far!

Today I'm featuring the anthology Sorry.

Sorry is an anthology put together by a few independent artists (the book is put out by the I Know Joe Kimpel art collective that was formed by the students of the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont).

It has four comics in it, all under the general theme of "sorry."

Caitlin Plovnick provides perhaps the best story in the book, with a bizarre story about a mermaid that turns, as all mermaid stories do, quite gruesome. Plovnick has a wonderful sense of storytelling, and I love how her almost gentle touch belies the sinister beneath the surface. The gag at the end about the "moral" of the story was great.

Colleen Frakes beautifully illustrates an adaptation of an "Upper Skagit Native Story" about a blue jay who is a bit of a copy cat. The way that Frakes constructs her panels makes the story flow beautifully, and it sets up the later scenes where she plays with the panel size all the more dramatic.

Emily Wieja closes out the production with a series of intense drawings telling the story of a pyromaniac. They are certainly dynamic drawings, although I would have liked a slightly tighter sense of narrative between the drawings.

If Plovnick is not the best of the book, then the third story by Mario Van Buren is, as he tells a haunting tale of playground roughhouse. On the I Know Joe Kimpel web site, where you can purchase this book (only six bucks), they actually offer this full story for free. Since they have it up there, I was just going to post the whole thing here, but darnit, I just couldn't bring myself to do a full story, especially one with such a striking ending. Go here and read it for yourself, or better yet, buy this nifty anthology and read it in print!

Definitely Recommended (with Plovnick and Van Buren being standouts of the four).