Rise, necrothread: RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!
Been buying this title for a while now and as it enters its second year of publication I have to say I am disappointed there's not much love here on the board for it. Despite Strip having started first, as of tomorrow there will be 51 more issues of The Phoenix published than it's main non-Toothy rival, and that is damn good going for a book that has yet to resort to free cover-mounted toys (in my time reading, anyway) and regularly features short prose stories like it assumes kids can actually pay attention for more than five seconds to read something.
Instead of assuming children want to drink cheap store-brand energy drinks while texting on their phones and calling a complete stranger a racially insensitive and/or sexually inappropriate name on Call Of Duty while looking at violent animated Japanese pornography on their computers because kids don't read as that's what nerds do and kids want to beat up nerds and not be one themselves, The Phoenix seems to assume it lives in some strange parallel reality where comics are fun and appropriate for all ages without being oppressively puritanical or talking down to their audience - Star Cat is ostensibly a child's strip, for instance, yet featured a multi-part homage to John Carpenter's The Thing that was actually quite amusing. Some rough edges, certainly, like the odd bit of overly-familiar material like "Troy Trailblazer" being what looks like some sort of fanart mash-up of Major Kusunagi, Johnny Quest and Henry McCoy set in Buzz Lightyear continuity, but overall it's a solid weekly anthology of creator-owned adventure and comedy strips of a very European flavor and well worth your three bucks.
So BUMP.
