Unico Collections’ was special because it was started by UNICO COMICS and the AMATEUR COMICS GUILD and put together an amateur only comic book open to any artist or writer from across the UK who felt they were up to the challenge to make their own comic. This means that the people who want to break out into the comic world will be given a chance to show their talent through this graphic novel and give them that rare first step on to the small press network.
Unico Collections is an anthology comic, attempting to showcase their own writers and new artists. As ever in anthologies, this one is something of a mixed bag, however, the quality is surprisingly high in this anthology. In fact, several of the strips made me want to read more of them to see what would happen next. Snowfall, The Trade, Say Goodbye to Hollywood and Fallen Hero are exemplary examples of comics writing and artwork and should be published in their own comics. There is a fair selection of arse in here as well, such as Amy’s Story, for which I could find no real redeeming features, however, the good outweighs the bad. I do have a few complaints, though… It’s not made clear that there is more to each of the strips inside, so when initially reading them it seems like they end abruptly. Also, they often end before you’ve had a chance to really sample the work or just when they seem to be getting going. Several times, I was just getting into a comic and had to face disappointment. It makes me wonder whether anthologies really are the best vehicle for longer, more involving strips. it made me wonder whether standalone strips work better. There’s been no attempt to get any consistency from strip to strip, which can be somewhat jarring. One strip will be laid out a certain way and will have a specific lettering style and caption style, the next will be totally different. It’s a small detail, but I can’t help but feel it would create a better look if Unico imposed a uniform look and feel on some of these details. Of more importance is the lack of editorial control. Throughout the anthology are scattered hundreds of spelling and grammar mistakes. It seems minor, but as a reader, you notice them. Having noticed them it brings it home to you that this is an amateur production. It doesn’t take a lot to fix stuff like this and makes a big difference to the readers perception of it. There’s also the lack of editorial control on the actual writing itself. There are many examples of the writer trying to sound dramatic rather than really think about the flow of the writing. Killer Born, is a fair example of this, because it seems apparent that the writer had no one telling him; “look, stop trying to come up with epic sounding lines and try to make it flow and make sense”. Still, these seem fairly minor complaints when the overall quality is as high as it is here. In fact, I would go as far as to say, this is one of the best anthologies I’ve read in quite some time. 8/10 - Comics Village
