TALL TAILS #1-13

By: Mike Whybark
Date: Friday, January 11, 2002

TALL TAILS is an anthropomorphic fantasy adventure with sorcery, kidnapping, and honor set in a furry medieval world. Why furry? Well, the populace are bipedal, mostly civilized animals, such as wolves, tigers, horses, and hedgehogs. The characters and story were the initial effort from the now veteran creators back in the early nineties. The current incarnation of the series was launched with the introduction of the Vision premium line of all-animal books a few years ago. One thing led to another in the world of independent comix (red in tooth and claw, dontcha know), and the team of Jose Calderon and Daphne Lage found themselves with a detailed storyline, characters they were deeply committed to, and energy to continue the project, if sans publisher. They opted for self-publication as a black-and-white zine-like digest available via direct order. Including the initial Vision issues, the series is up to 13 or so issues, and, from what I gathered, is years from completion.

Our story concerns the theft of an item of vast magical power and the efforts of our heroes to track the object and regain it. As the story progresses, plotlines multiply to the point that issue #13 offers 6 scenes in a 24 page comic. While such a profusion of plot points can be regarded as an economical reader's delight, it can prove confounding to a casual one. Many of the scenes depend on information presented only in prior issues and the reader that lacks knowledge will not understand crucial dramatic events. Serial narrative must balance long-term accumulation of detail while offering the newcomer events that entice. I found it necessary to read the entire series in order to understand the narrative events of the issue cited above.

Once I had read all the issues, I enjoyed the story and the characters presented. A letter in one of the books noted that TALL TAILS is reminiscent of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and I concur - down to the profusion of plots over the course of a campaign! Ms. Lage's art also is reminiscent of the striking black and white illos that appeared in the early D&D books. However, her art too appears to suffer from overcrowding - it can be hard to clearly see the protagonists on a frame against the accumulation of detailed visualizations of the fantasy world.

I think this chock-full-o-stuff phenom derives from the self-publication. A firm editorial hand might cut back on plot threads per issue; concurrently, larger pages alone might resolve the visibility issues. No doubt either creator can carry out the work for a long period of time. Lord knows, the work's plenty creative; greater focus on the needs of the readers could improve it. That said, republishing it as a unified work, moving pages around to unify plotlines is worth considering. Whether or not that will happen is largely up to the folks who order directly from Dreamweaver.


To sum up: a reasonably fun read, if you have access to all the issues. Folks who really jones for a furry swords-and-sorcery tale will get a kick out of it. Everyone else may find it to be too much work.

TALL TAILS 1-13

Grade: B-

Issue: Nos. 1-13

Author(s): Jose Calderon, Daphne Lage

Publisher: Dreamweaver Press

Price: #1-4, $2.95; #6-13, $3.50 each or $20 for #6-13