Written by guest contributor Kevin Blanton
Kit of Boorish is a pig. But not just any pig. He is the hero of The Epic Legend of Orgnob, a comic that is seeking your help on Indiegogo.
The Legend of Orgnob is a 13 issue series created by Stefie Zohrer using the power of the internet. Even after Zohrer was forced to quit the story due to financial concerns, she never stopped believing in her dreams. Now a stay-at-home mom, Zohrer hopes to self-publish 1,000 copies of the first issue of the comic by June of 2016.
Zohrer is offering a variety of perks to supporters. There are the standard t-shirts, pins, stickers, and posters. But you also may get a replica of the magical sword featured in the story, a custom-created portrait of the donor as a comic book character, and a “Helmet of Brawn” (featured in the comic).
The Epic Legend of Orgnob is a funny animals comic and I don’t usually like funny animals comics (except for Cerebus the Aardvark). But what can I say? From what I have read, the story isn’t as deep as Cerebus, but that doesn’t matter. You will have a fun time with these funny animals.
Previously on the CBMFP...
The film is heavier on ideas than plot. Caleb (Domhall Gleeson) is a talented young computer programmer for search engine giant Blue Book. He gets the opportunity of a lifetime when he is invited to meet his company's reclusive genius CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac) and participate in an experiment with a groundbreaking AI (Alicia Vikander).
Issue eight begins to tie together many of the loose ends of the series, and by doing so, fixes one of the only major flaws of the book. Invisible Republic has been since issue one, divided into two storylines, one in the future and one in the past, and, until now, the past story has been far more interesting and involving than the future one. However, as the two reporters debate how to handle the journal, the original author, fugitive semi-revolutionary Maia Reveron tells them about the circumstances of its writing in one of the single most moving and revealing moments in the series. This reveals new emotional stakes that run through both stories and also shed some light on the conflicted motivations of a wartime reporter.
Like the book on which it is based, Going Clear is divided into two distinct halves. First we're introduced to the birth of Scientology via its founding father, L. Ron Hubbard. The man Scientologists refer to as "LRH" was a pulp sci-fi writer, churning out over a thousand books to make a living (at a penny a word). He is presented as a pathological liar, a man given to fantasically embellishing his less-than-stellar military career or straight up inventing "field work" studying indigenous tribes.
King Conan: Wolves Beyond The Border
EA-016 Star Wars C-3PO statue
Gillen and McKelvie touching base with Kohl, one of their very earliest creations, condenses a lot of nostalgia into one issue. Kohl always read to me as a distillation of the platonic Gillen McKelvie, that single entity who created Phonogram: he was hip, but too obsessive; he was self-conscious about being self-conscious, and that made him cool; and he had excellent taste in music across almost all genres. Now, to see them go back to him is to see them regard a sculpture from a decade ago, that has been collecting some dust and doesn’t seem as appropriate to display any more. To give Kohl a good deed to go out on helps him rise above some of the clunkiness of “Rue Britannia.”
As Nick said in his review of number one, and as I agreed with him in my review of the second issue, this is not the most accessible story. Not only is there no hand-holding, but there's very little context given for its events. The context that 
The story picks up with Dartanian and Baba Yaga (apparently a recurring character in the GFT universe) are gearing up to go rescue Avril, and she finds out what they’ve done to all the disappearing witches. Baba Yaga loses it, but continues to work with the New Crusader to rescue Avril. They gear themselves up and go save the young witch from Liza who’s about to consume her and her powers with the notion to protect more witches.
The question of necessity popped up a lot for me in this issue—the last issue built Andy up so strongly before the reveal that, while I don’t necessarily mind, this issue, it would have felt more appropriate to either leave it until the end of the arc, where we have more time to see what Andy has become before we see what made him that way, or to not include the issue at all. Aside from that, the issue also felt shorter than normal. Part of that may be the inclusion of two separate previews for other books in the back, but it is what it is. Having said all that, the sequences are all paced out extremely well, and Lemire’s dialogue is as natural and fluid as always, betraying the characters’ emotion with simplicity.
Another thing that bothered me is that Teddy is such a goddamn dick. Now look, I get that he is still on the road to personal redemption and is most likely shaking off years of drug-addled apathy. I’m also generally a big fan of stories with moral ambiguity. But the character’s setup over the last few issues fell flat here into someone who is less a hero, and little more than an unrepentant frat boy. The same could be said of the previously more virtuous Debbie, who here seemingly allows Teddy to enact his murder spree without reproach, while the two exchange shriveled dick jokes. It all rang a bit hollow.
Now that we’re in the back half of The Spire, things are starting to take more dramatic turns for the weird. The first half of the book leaned pretty heavily on the genre tropes inherent in police procedurals, but they were set in a richly imagined world, where things are so different that it was still a delight to read. It seems like this issue was a pivot for Spurrier and Stokely into more heavily action-adventure territory, with the hero trying to save the woman she loves. In the case of a creative team like this, a pivot can only mean more bonkers-awesome stuff going on, so I 100% support it. Add into that that Spurrier’s dialogue and Stokely and May’s sense of mood can perfectly pull off a subtle realignment of a character, such as when Shå tries to rehire her favorite deputy, and this book is all about the emotional core that it revolves around. The trappings of Zoarim and Marchionesses and Nothinglands and Sculpted are all astonishing feats of imagination, but ultimately, we’re here to see people let each other down and try to make things right. It’s a noble story and it’s so worthwhile.
Segawa's powers are cool. In fact, there was a rather similar new X-Men in Bendis's recent run, who had the power to control vehicles and the like. But the new mutant had only other new mutants and old repetitive stories as his foil. Segawa's counterpart, and the counterpart to all of the original heroes in this title, is a rich cultural world that is built into every page, and capped off with interesting historical context in the book's back matter. 
Gillen and McKlevie, through and through collaborators, ought to be commended for making each of the Pantheon’s interest (disinterest in the case of Tara) in godhood distinct, and complementary their personal crisis. The recklessly exciting Lucifer was once a bored human, Morrigan was a goth kid battling nihilism, and Perspehone wanted to loved by others. In Sakhmet’s case, godhood means the ability to do whatever she wants (fight, fuck, scream) without the fear that she’ll come to harm and more than perhaps even Baal she looks at her two-year expiration date as a fair exchange for what she’s been granted. Illustrating just how much she’s taken advantage of this, we’re treated to a morning after scene where Sakhmet wakes up in her room at Valhalla surrounded by an assortment of bodies. Graham distinguishes this from similar scenes of hedonism by injecting it with humor through oddly posed sleeping humans, and props like the head from a panda bear costume, and a guy in the foreground decked out in the remnants of a sailor outfit. However, the scene I lingered on for quite a while was the aforementioned concert where Sakhmet’s music manifests phantom cats that roam throughout a crowd that’s clearly loving every moment of it. Unlike the controlled reverence and orgasm displayed during Ananke’s concert in the first issue, the folks here are losing their shit while also remaining content to simply pet one of the phantom cats.
Donovan especially deserves some mad props for his ability to transition between large-scale fight scenes and conversations while making both equally captivating. In the brawl over Manhattan, Tynion admirably lets Donovan do the work of getting across the stakes of the fight through wordless panels that show us the casualties resulting from Blue and Red’s fight. With Steve Wand’s color-coded lettering, things are never confusing even as Blue and Red talk and fight through new bodies, allowing for compelling scene transitions such as going from the kaiju battle to a one-on-one fight between Red and Blue in two individual bodies where the dialogue from the larger fight continues on in the second.
What makes the story interesting is that it’s not that heavy on the zombies. At least not until the third issue, but even then it avoids a lot of the pitfalls of the genre. It is heavy on the Christmas aspect of the story, but it brings its own lore and twist to Christmas. Santa is real and he does get the letters, but he doesn’t read them. Instead he just throws them into a pot and the good kids produce magic and the bad kids produce coal which they use to run their entire operation.
During all this we see how Santa and the elves work. All mall Santa's are actually elves and they can tell when you’ve been naughty or nice. One elf is burnt out on the job and wants some old fashion justice for all the mean shits. She gets paired up with the actual Santa to get her spirit back, but that’s when the zombie plague starts to spread.
The art is mostly good. If you’ve even seen children in comics, then you know they usually look like shrunken adults on the page. It doesn’t happen that often here, but there’s definitely a few key times in which it does. Otherwise the art is pretty detailed. There are some weird shifts in the style in later issues and it really starts to look inconsistent by the third issue. I thought there was an art change because of this, but it could be that the coloring switches after the first issue. Because of this, the first issue is definitely the best issue. It’s not terrible, but it’s not the best fit for the artist or the story and the inconsistency of the art didn’t do it any favors.
Now we see the boys work a little and then surrounded in fire. Then we see them back at work and each having their own delusion of falling to another side. There we find the skeleton dog that’s on the cover waiting for them. This dog rescues them and takes them on a journey through several different landscapes.
Frankly, the biggest compliment I can give the issue is to say if you enjoyed the previous five, you will enjoy this one. Matt Cummings art continues to be charmingly effective with simple geometric characters, exaggerated facial expressions, and bright colors. The fight scenes are easy to follow, and more importantly always feel like part of the story instead of a detour from it. While it may not be spectacular, Cumming's art compliments Leth's writing by never lingering too long over a given dramatic point, opting instead to always keep propelling the story forward. The result is a book that never wears out its comedic elements.
Afterwards we go back to Gilad’s paradise and see him interact with his family some more. It’s again incredibly emotional and its made even more so by Gilad’s decision that he reveals in this issue.