Released November 16th, 2009
Anthology 2 #72: Bento Box #2
By Artifice Comics
Released September 11th, 2009
Anthology 2 #71: Bento Box #1
By Artifice Comics
First, I’ve got to explain what a bento box is. At least, to my understanding. It’s like a lunchbox. With small compartments for tiny bits of food. A Japanese Lunchable. Only more sampler and less complete “meal” (if you would call a Lunchable a “meal”). Maybe Tupperware’s a better example. Minus the burp.
So now that that’s clear (oh so clear), what is this? Tastes, teases, tid-bits of stories to whet your appetite and make you come back for more month after month like an addict to awesome. Here you’ve got yourself four starts, the first parts to ongoing stories that’ll come out in monthly segments packaged with other short ongoing bursts and maybe some oneshots while we’re at it. It’s like an anthology of serialized stories. Woah, novel idea, right?
We’ve got flesh devouring things, Shanghai in ruin, an exploding man, and a riot. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am! How’s that for a taste of great?
And we’re just getting started.
Released September 4th, 2009
Anthology 2 #70
By Jason Kenney
“Wow, a real, live mob!”
I was stunned. Simply amazed. In all my months of being all heroic I had never stumbled across any sort of organized crime.
But, no, here I was dancing around bullets fired by some mob I happened to stumble across while patroling the harbor area of Pacific City one night.
It was pretty neat.
I leapt and rolled behind a crate and stayed there for a second while the gents on the other side cooled their jets. A couple of them decided that shooting through the crate would be a good idea.
“YOU IDIOTS!” shouted a heavily accented voice. “STOP FIRING!”
And they did.
Released August 21st, 2009
“Beta testing is ready to begin Doctor Biggles,” Doctor Forbes proudly waved his arms like a game show person cheerfully displaying the product.
The blonde vet nodded in approval. “Did we have to amputate all the limbs and replace them though?”
“Yes,” he solemnly replied, “it seemed as though the gangrene was intentionally placed on specific spots to warrant amputation.”
“Bastards,” she sneered and hit the nearby cart with her fist.
Forbes continued, “Don’t worry. I have given it top of the line equipment: extensive-retractable double jointed maneuverability limbs, 40,000 pound per square inch grip in hands and feet, virtual reality display, ultra sonic, infrared, and radar detectors, a quartz memory database, 1.7 Gigohertz CPU, fiber optic processors, sign language translation protocols per your specifications, and a partridge in a pear tree. I could go on, but there are loads of little surprises I put into the cybernetics.”
“Good, at least that nature wench will leave us alone once we’ve done her dirty work. The poor creature didn’t deserve what happened,” Biggles caressed the synthetic skin covering the cybernetic arm.
Forbes nodded in agreement, “Yes, but we will learn if all this work will be worth it. We have no idea what that Ecological terrorist is going to use this cybernetic gorilla against.”
“Speak of the devil” the female vet wished for once she had the a shotgun in hand.
The antelope morphed into a male figure as the horns on his head seemed to emulate the Norse Aesir Loki.
“The very ground speaks to us, and told us of the completion of Beta testing on your part. Now, it is our turn. Testing must be done to ensure you have fulfilled your end.”
“Well, I have a few more glitches in the system that I need to correct. Your cybernetic gorilla, or Super-Ape or whatever, will be ready within the hour,” Doctor Forbes announced.
“I can bide my time for now,” the Fertile Crescent male intently watched Doctor Forbes as he made the modifications.
Biggles paced around the room as she decided to give the Fertile Crescent denizen the third degree. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell us why you chose a creature of nature.”
“There is a war which you can not hope to comprehend. A war which will only mean the destruction of our land. We once chose a human to stand for our ideals, but he soon went back to his old ways. It is now the territorial instinct of an animal that will suit us best.”
The entity produced an apple seemingly out of thin air and began to eat it.
Released August 14th, 2009
The Cold Academy #5
By Jericho Vilar
31.
Reymundo “Rey Rey” Salazar believed in the power of shine.
Painstakingly decked out in the finest gear, Rey Rey’s five foot four frame bobbed languidly on the corner decked out in crisp grey LRG jeans and the latest A Bathing Ape’s attention hungry hoodies. The severe angels of his birdlike jaw supported a pair of thirsty eyes and a stone chiseled grimace. His head moved to the beat of Mobb Deep’s “Trife Life” despite of his obvious indifference to his current situation. To him at that precise moment in time, rocking to the poetry of Prodigy’s flow was a mere formality, adornment as necessary as the ice on his ear and the platinum chain on his neck. They too were nothing more than pieces of wardrobe he slipped on like the shirt on his back.
Standing on the corner of Cleveland and Erie at three in the morning wasn’t enough for Rey Rey. With every throb of the bass, he wore the glow of probable cause with pride.
Being born into the rugged culture of Harmony projects taught Rey Rey about life as the target of suspicion, but it was the sting of the blunt handle of a patrolman’s pistol the first time he got rolled that schooled him in the futility of fighting it.
“It is what it is,” someone told him once. “Why the fuck fight it?”
Released August 7th, 2009
Humanity #8
By Alex Cook & Erlend Larsen
“In space, no one can hear you scream” is an often-used tagline for my kind of work. It stems from one of the classical xenophobic flat flicks, dating almost three centuries back. It’s a lie. In space, everyone can hear you scream. If they care.
All you need is an operating transmitter unit. You can turn the dial to an unused frequency and scream all you want. That signal will spread out from your sender and go around the entire galaxy at 300,000 kilometers per second, the speed of light. Sooner or later, someone is bound to listen to that exact frequency when the signal passes. The universe is just too vast to think that it couldn’t happen.
I like to do that, sometimes. Flip the frequency to something between the cosmic microwave radiation and the normal communication channels. And then I just talk. I talk about life, death, how lonely and horny I am after several months in solitude – it’s become a kind of therapy for me. The radio just sits there, listens carefully to everything I have to say to it, and it never ever talks back.
My name is Marvin Darwin. I have anything from thirty seconds to two minutes before I am no longer the sole member of lunar science research team five. Do you have time to listen to me?
Released July 31st, 2009
Anthology 2 #68
By Matthew J. Pierce
Someone will one day record that the World conceived out of the Twenty-First Century was a corrupt, self-destructive place. Thriving, prone to friction, its very core overworked and tired. A few years following, someone else will record that this was not entirely true, that the sun did indeed set on the frantic, overpopulated landscape carved out of the Information Age and the psyches of Gibson, Orwell and Dick.
Various times, as a matter of fact, did some sort of Revolutionary or Visionary share its wisdom and foresight with the children of melting pot societies and generation gap paradoxes. But from that foresight arose something contradictory to the anything but dismal, seemingly infantile and yet apparently infinite sense of Hope. Out of the awareness of a community derived existence, flew men and women who were not harbingers of peace and serenity.
They fired beams of unfathomable energy from their hands, leveling entire cities, or skulked in tattered cloaks of shadow in alley ways, stalking their next prey; or they simply donned strange features and deceiving costumes in some hope of creating false pretenses of good and just, only to stab a trusting, hopeful community in the back. Criminals. Super Villains. Men and women who walked and lived in the gray. Sadly, this was the penultimate of human achievement and evolution and at the same time, the finest example of humankind’s haphazard, greed stricken, self serving destiny.
Released July 24th, 2009
Anthology 2 #67
By Chad S. Roberts
Paul cursed under his breath. He waved his pistols to the left. Again he cursed. He moved them right. Curse.
“Goddamned sunny days.”
Three figures stood in the middle of Fisherman’s Wharf, motionless except for their heads, which moved left to right, watching another figure waving a pair of pistols around, speaking dirty to them.
The first figure, a short black-haired man with glasses in a yellow raincoat was sweating profusely, eyes wide at the fourth figure. The second figure to his left was a Spanish woman dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and seemed quite exasperated, shaking her head back and forth at the figure. The third figure stood seven feet tall, wore a large black and red robe accented with streaks of blood, and was topped off with a rather dashing cow’s head used as a hat.
The third figure, was so aghast that he had forgotten he was clenching a nasty looking silver dagger in one of his purple tentacles, and the fifth, as of yet unmentioned figure below him. Which in fact turned out to be a corpse, and if it wasn’t a corpse, it would probably look pretty damn confused too. But it could only look dead right now. But you would bet your milk money it was sighing rather loudly in the afterlife.
“Second.”
“Damnit.”
“Second.”
“What?” Paul looked up at the bright yellow blur speaking to him.
“Just put on your sunglasses.”
“Wha?”
“On top of your head.”
Paul stopped waving his guns, and with the barrel of one of them, pulled the black shades down from the top of his head. They slid down over his eyes, and the yellow blur coalesced into a guy named Daniel. Another, exasperated figure turned out to be a rather exasperated woman who he knew. And the last figure was a big bloody monster with a weapon.
“Much better.” Drive-By Chronicles: Sidewayz hd
Second turned, pointed his guns at the big nasty bastard and then holstered them in the old leather gunbelt hanging on his hips. He turned again to Daniel.
“Thanks Split.”
The third figure uttered an “urp” as black blood shot out his back in numerous areas, and then unceremoniously slapped dead to the wooden dock.
Juana, still exasperated heaved out a woman’s sigh and shook her head.
She muttered “Idiot,” just loud enough for Second to hear.
Paul looked at her.
“What? I hate glinties.”
Released July 17th, 2009
“They’re on the run,” the thin man stood up after examining the wide spread footsteps of the gorillas.
The short fat one responded with a grunt. “Bloody hell man, I told you not to be so daft and go into the bush to take a fucking piss. The damn scent travelled downwind and warned the beasties.”
Michael Clayton move “If it makes you feel better, I got caught while trying to zip myself up. Besides, when the wind switched they were warned before I took it.” The tall one put his hands on his hips.
The stout one shook his head in complete disappointment. “Bloody yank, it would make me feel better if the zipper acted like a guillotine. We put on the scent cover for a damn reason, to hide our body odor even going downwind. But, no… You act like a damn fucking little boy and take a piss when the wind is about to switch.”
“Screw you,” the American responded with a flip of the middle finger.
Drive-By Chronicles: Sidewayz download The short one smirked. “We’re looking for gorillas today, not birds. Now, make up for your stupidity and track these fucking apes so we can shoot the shit out of them and make thousands of pounds for doing so.”
Released July 10th, 2009
Anthology 2 #65
By Jason Kenney
“I’ve lived in this city for three years now and I don’t think I’ve ever felt safe.”
She mindlessly stabbed at the Chinese food on her plate as she stared over Isiah Rowe’s shoulder and beyond, more thinking out loud than conversing, a segway from whatever mindless topic they had been discussing before. Isiah had noticed she was prone to doing that, going from one topic to another within the blink of an eye. He found it endearing.
They were in his apartment, eating takeout while the sound of rain outside mixed with Ray Charles on the stereo.
“Felt safe how?” he asked, reaching for his glass and taking a sip as she shook her head clear and looked back to him, seemed surprised that he spoke, that he heard her thought.
“Oh, well, you know,” she looked to her plate, kept stabbing at her food, “just going out alone at night.”
“I think you’d find that with any city.”
“I guess,” she sighed. “You’d just think that with everything this city has that it’d be safer. This kinda Utopia, you know?”
