2015 Reading Challenge Book 030 Dark Horse Presents volume 3

TITLE-The Best of Dark Horse Presents Volume 3
AUTHOR-Various
FORMAT-Trade Paperback
FIRST TIME READING-Yes
COST-99 cents

I loved reading the black and white anthology comic Dark Horse Presents. It is a title that I always look for in cheap bins. Once again I was using an Amazon giftcard I received for X-mas.This is a 132 page collection of 20 one page and short stories.
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What appealed to me with Dark Horse Presents was the collection of talent. You never knew who all would show up in each issue.Some of the better known talents in this collection are,Paul "Concrete" Chadwick,Matt "Grendal" Wagner,Timothy"Scout"Truman,Ed "Lowlife" Brubaker,Everett"Duckman" Peck,Eddie"Deadface"Campbell and Adam Hughes.

The stand out stories of the 20 in this trade are.

The Aerialist,written and drawn by Matt Wagner. This appears to be the first part of a multiple part story. Set in the future.Where relationships between men and women is outlawed. Just when the story is starting to get interesting it ends. Going in I knew that some of the stuff in this trade would be R-rated. But I wasn't expecting full frontal male nudity. I am tempted to track down the rest of this story.

Jungle of the giants by Tim and Ben Truman. This short science fiction tale has a father fighting off giant insects. And contains a nice O'henry twist at the end.

From Dark Horse Presents issue 36 we get a well drawn Aliens vs Predator story. Before we got two horrible AVP films,Dark Horse published plenty of really well done stories. This one while short is a good read.

Burning Man written by Ed Brubaker. Before Brubaker was at Marvel,he was getting lots of attention for his autobiographical comics. This tale is about a pre-teen Ed. Who with his friends sees a man get set on fire. And Brubaker goes into detail about how seeing this affected him through out his life.

Everett Peck does a very short Duckman piece. I wish there was a trade reprinting all the Duckman stuff.

Bacchus:a God and his Dog by Eddie Campbell. The Greek good of wine and revelry tells a tale of making wine and his loyal dog. I love Eddie Campbell's Deadface/Bacchus stuff.

And finally ,and also the last story in the colleciton.Hip-deep in the consciousness stream,Adam Hughes does the art. In this tale of the editor of Dark Horse Presents needs 8 pages to fill out an issue. They get Hughes to draw his normal gorgeous women.And play around with the conventions of cheesecake artwork.

The stories I didn't talk about range from great art but boring story to meh art but entertaining story.Just like how an anthology ,be it film,book or comic,you get stuff that you enjoy and stuff that you will never read again. The hit or miss ratio of this trade is pretty good. If it was a baseball player it would be batting 300 with a decent amount of RBIs. Hell this trade is the 1994 Frank Thomas of comic anthology collections.

The Best of Dark Horse Presents volume 3 gets a 3.85 outta 5.