Finally this week, the Oni Press Color Special 2002. Oni have been producing these things for a few years now. They're anthologies which usually combine a couple of comedy stories, and material spun off from a variety of their recent and upcoming series.

Warren Ellis, Phil Hester and Ande Parks contribute "Friday I'm In Love", which is nominally an Operation story but is actually this year's obligatory inter-character comedy crossover. Apparently there's going to be more Operation stories to come, although it's not clear from this whether it's going to be a comedy concept generally or whether it's just being played that way for present purposes. They come across here as a Men in Black type organisation monitoring weirdness around the world, which isn't the most original concept, but works quite well here when it's played for laughs. Hester and Parks play deadpan on the art, which is usually the best way with this kind of material.

Gail Simone and J Bone's story is a four-page comedy piece, "The Big Snobby Git." It's a neat jab at American Anglophilia - with obvious comics fandom overtones - and pretty much accurate, if you ask me. (Here in Scotland, Anglophilia is not a widespread problem.)

"One Plus One" by Neal Shaffer and Daniel Krall is a trailer, albeit for a miniseries which is actually on the schedules for September. Given the nature of these stories, it would probably have been an idea to put some kind of reference to the actual series at the end of the story itself - as it is, many of them read rather oddly if you're expecting them to work on their own. While this is very nicely illustrated, it reads like four pages randomly excised from the first issue, and it doesn't hold up all that well in isolation.

"Technorganic: Mechanized Fate" by Sabina Ex Machina and Steve Rolston is a vignette about a robot escaping its programming. I'm not certain whether this is a trailer for an upcoming series or not - it reads like one, but there's no mention of it anywhere that I can see. It's a cute idea, which doesn't feel like it's been fully explored here. Fine if it's a trailer.

Christine Norrie, the artist from the first Hopeless Savages mini, does a Kung-Fu Space Girls four-pager. Judging from her website, this seems to be a set-up for something bigger, although again it's not desperately clear from this issue alone. One of those "cross two concepts and produce something knowingly ludicrous" things, and I can see it making for an amusing mini. Norrie's art works well with the flat, animation-style colouring she's used here.

From Ted Naifeh, there's a prequel to Courtney Crumrin & The Night
Things, which is one of Oni's titles aimed at younger readers. This is a nice little piece, which strikes the right balance between acting as a trailer and containing its own mini-plot.

Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston, the creative team from the rather good Coffin miniseries, produce "Vacant", a story about a homeless man who's largely abandoned his body in favour of astral
projection. Quite a strong idea here, and excellent artwork. Probably the best thing in the issue.

Gary Phillips arguably misses the point of a colour special by producing a text piece which acts as a prequel to his Shot Callerz miniseries, with illustrations by Brett Weldele. As with the comic, it's not my sort of thing, and to be honest, I didn't finish it.  It's good within its genre, but it's just a genre I'm not interested in.

Christian Gossett and Bradley Kayl of Team Red Star make a rather drastic shift of style with their story, a teaser for an upcoming Buddha Master & Angst Man miniseries. It's a proudly incoherent story, more about conveying the attitude of the series than actually making any sense. However, it's genuinely funny, and newcomer artist Aaron Horvath gives it a suitably exuberant and mock-innocent look. Promising, although the actual series isn't scheduled until 2003.

Finally, there's a two-page vignette from Bryan O'Malley trailing next year's Lost At Sea mini (which is a nice little monologue about blurred vision but doesn't really get enough space to make much of the characters) and a frankly cryptic one-page strip by Kelley Seda which soars gently over my head before colliding with the back wall in an ugly fashion.

Anthologies are inevitably a mixed bag, and the main negative with this collection is the inclusion of several trailer stories which aren't all that effective when you take them in isolation. And given that most of this year's stories is trailing books which haven't been published yet, it's not like I have much choice in the matter. It's also a mild irritation that it isn't immediately apparent which of these stories are trailer and which, if any, are supposed to be solely self-contained. Given that part of the point is to promote the miniseries, you may as well be obvious about it rather than relegate it to a page of "meet the creators" at the back.

Nonetheless, Operation, "Big Snobby Git", "Vacant" and the Team Red Star stories all hit the mark, and there are several others which make for interesting adverts. It's patchier than some previous years, but still a nice survey of Oni's wide-ranging output.

Rating: B

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