Michael S. Bracco' s Atty & Max

I'm not sure when or where I picked this issue of Michael Bracco's early comic zine up. It isn't signed so I don't think I bought it at a convention, unless I dug it out of a dollar box. That seems like the best story I can come up with so I'm going with it. 

I dug this old Michael Bracco comic out of a dollar bin at Baltimore Comic-Con a few years ago. I probably meant to present it to Bracco and pretend that I am a big fan since way back, but like most of my time at cons I either didn't get to talk to him, or more likely I did talk to him but completely forgot that I had this issue in my bag. Maybe next time I see him appearing somewhere I'll try my trick again. 

Atty & Max are two minds in a single body. So this is a Odd Couple with a twist story The two, or is it one, bumble through a fairly bleak almost post-apocalyptic landscape occupied by assorted monsters and mutants. There is a general American West style to most of the sentient critters in the world.I wonder why post-apoclyptic folks choose American West style apparel, must be all the dust. 

The art in this early book is fantastic. The layouts are clean and they move the eye nicely across the page. Even in this book Bracco shows that he has a great sense of sequential art storytelling. The story in this issue doesn't grab me the same way the Birth did, but he is still young here and developing his writing.

This little xerox zine is pretty good stuff. Bracco's work is always visually enjoyable, and the writing is fair too. It's a rare combination of good art and good writing in these magazines that make me wonder why Bracco isn't more popular than he is. 

His Novo series achieved some acclaim and Adam Wreck was great too. His current web comic The Creators is great too. There was a complete collection of Atty & Max, Broken Frontiers published by Alterna but it appears to be out of print now. Bracco is of course a Baltimorean so I have a great deal of bias in my opinion of him. His stuff is in all of the comic shops I go to, so it is hard to tell how well known he is outside of the area. 

Bracco also makes some really fine tee-shirts with some great designs. His Spaghetti Kiss label? imprint? studio? has some fantastic stuff on it. Well worth checking out, and checking out regularly as he rotates the designs.  Just now I  saw an A-Z food placemat I think I need for my kiddie and some of those cute onesies too.