Volume Three, Number Four

CRYSTAL FRACTAL COMICS PREVIEW No. 0.0. One-shot published by Crystal Fractal Comics. Full color 20-page comic with full color cover. $3.95 U.S. and $4.00 Canadian. Published as a teaser for the Toronto Ontario Canada comics market and soon to be available through Harvest through retailers as a promotion of the planned Crystal Fractal Comics line CRYSTAL FRACTAL COMICS PREVIEW is also an introduction to this new Canadian comics publisher's shared universe. The background., which is laid out in this comic, on which the planned titles' story lines are to be set is established in the Philippines in 1596 when a band of sorcerers attempts to cross into what is called "The Realm of Dreams". They fail resulting in them being scattered throughout time and space. If this sounds somewhat complex it is but writer Derrek Lennox does an excellent job of making everything, errr, crystal clear in this well thought out introduction to the Crystal Fractal Universe . My only complaint about this comic-which also features some stunning artwork by the way-is that in a couple of places the dialogue could use a bit of work and that in one or two instances I got distracted due to poor layout of dialogue balloons. But these are very, very minor nit picks and did not in any way take away from my enjoyment of this comic. If the planned Crystal Fractal Comics line-which includes Dr. Twilight, Magnus Rex, Entropy and Project: Epsilon London Town along with some online comics that can be found at www.crystalfractals.com -is as good as this preview Crystal Fractal Comics is most definitely a comics publisher to keep an eye on in the coming months.

My only concern about Crystal Fractal Comics' plans is that they might be moving a bit too fast by launching too many titles over a short period of time. While the quality is most definitely there in their books readers might not want to commit to too many titles at once until they are certain that they are worth spending money on. I do though hope that Crystal Fractal Comics makes it and strongly recommend you give their titles a look see. They're a good read with excellent artwork and isn't that what comics are all about? So if you would like to learn more about Crystal Fractal Comics give their website a visit at www.crystalfractals.com .

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That's it for this week, folks. Next week, well, I'm considering a couple of ideas for next week so you'll just have to come back and see. By the way you can subscribe to this column from my blog. Just go to http://dispatchesfromthegreatwhitenorth.blogspot.com and sign up. While you're at it why not sign up to The Groovy Agent's blog as well. Diversions of The Groovy Kind is an excellent read and covers all sorts of neat stuff about comics of the 70s. You can sign up for The Agent's blog at http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com . See you next week.