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Habitual Entertainment #4
Habitual Entertainment #4

Beautiful, Cool and Irreplaceable: The downfall of plastic surgury.

56 pages
Hard Cover
Hand Made

Habitual Entertainment #4More Details
Reviews:

Will Dinski gave gave me a wildly killer very rare hardcover comic, either at MoCCA, San Diego, or TCAF... man, i don't recall. In any case, "Beautiful, Cool and Irreplaceable," the story in Habitual Entertainment #4 is awesome. The twisted sordid tale of rarified Hollyweird freaks, hell-bent on self-image, power and ego really gets under the skin. His art reminds me lots of vintage Pete (Hey, Mister) Sickman-Garner, and his black black humor actually does too. Wicked good comics, also recommended.

Will is doing some excellent comics. Check out this strip on the comix section of our own website, and if you like, for god's sake find more.

-Brett Warnock, Top Shelf Comix



Wow. A great little hardcover (mini?) that will has created. Charlito says this guy is pals with Sam Hiti, and it kind of shows. I only mean that he seems to burst on the scene with a fully accomplished idea and the chops to pull it off. He also created some great posters and other minis that were pretty dang good. Do yourself a favor and check him out.

-Chris Pitzer, AdHouse Books

Price: $35.00

Habitual Entertanmnet #4
Habitual Entertanmnet #4

Paperback version of Beautiful, Cool and Irreplaceable.

Price: $6.00

Habitual Entertainment #3
Habitual Entertainment #3

A farmer, his son, and their robotic tractor.

24 pages
2-color silkscreen cover

Habitual Entertainment #3More Details
Reviews:

Will Dinski is no stranger around the SIZE MATTERS offices. Back in December of 2005 we showed you issues one and two of Habitual Entertainment.

Issue 3 is almost a total break from the style and feel of those minis. It’s a larger format and he uses a stiffer paper stock for the covers. Inside, all of the pages are a reddish-pink color with black ink as the only other tone.
Will’s story covers almost 150 years in 24 pages. He begins with a farmer, his newborn child, and his wife who dies during childbirth. Without the wife, the farmer and the kid grow apart, clash, and attempt to come together again as the father ages.

I’ve forgotten the most important part, I guess. The father doesn’t use traditional tractors and combines. He uses these huge spherical robots that, standing next to each other, look like Power Girl’s breasts. That explains how you get this classic line from son to father: “That giant tit of yours tried to kill me!”
Check out Will’s website and blog for information on his comics. He’s published three issues of Habitual Entertainment and several other minis. Issue 3 of Habitual Entertainment is and worth every penny.

-Shawn Hoke, Size Matters (shawnhoke.blogspot.com)

HABITUAL ENTERTAINMENT #3 ("Bury The Hatchet And The Cross You Bear") is his most recent effort. The layout and presentation is interesting: it's on red paper, with a 5 x 5 grid. Each panel is very small, cramming a lot of information on the page. When he needs to, he expands important images to take up more of the page. He solves his space problem by placing dialogue in entire panels next to images. In order to create breaks in the story, he puts in blank panels to represent pages with a crease in them. The story is about a farmer in the future, having to deal with a son he didn't want because his wife died giving birth to him. The focus of the story seems to be on the relationship between the farmer and his son, then takes a wild left turn as the quasi-sentient machines tilling the soil do something unexpected. Despite that ending, the theme of the story (relationship between father and son, dealing with death) remained intact. There's no pat resolution here, as the anger we see in both father and son and the nature of their conflict remain on the page.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequetart.com)

Price: $3.00

Habitual Entertainment 1-2
Habitual Entertainment 1-2

Reprint of the first two issues of Habitual Entertainment. Two self contained short stories.

56 pages

Habitual Entertainment 1-2More Details
Reviews:

Both issues of Habitual Entertainment have two covers. The outside covers are silk-screened transparencies, and the first issue’s interior cover is also silk-screened. Dinski has taken great care in wrapping his minis, but the real fun is inside.

In issue one a group of office workers decide, after three grievous transgressions, that they want to kill Simon, a fellow office worker, who also happens to be the son of the boss. In fairness to them, he is kind of a dick. What’s funny is how they mess with him on the fateful day. Stu walks up to Simon and casually mentions, “Tonight, after work, I’m going to beat you to death with a baseball bat… Well, not JUST me…everyone will.”

Do they do it? I’m obviously not telling here, but Dinski handles the ending in an unexpected way that pleases almost all parties involved.

Issue two of Habitual Entertainment is longer than issue one and it feels more substantial. Gerald, a long out of work actor finally receives a call – not for an acting job, but for a secret shopper job offered by a temp agency. But he treats the gig as an acting job, telling all of his neighbors and acquaintances that he’s going to be in a one-day play. And in his mind, it’s an acting gig. The story is largely told through the conversations of different characters, and there are two short bits of narration. As in the first mini, Dinski tweaks the ending a bit to give the story more panache.

Dinski has a clean line and pleasing style in both of these minis. The first issue’s art suffers a bit from a grainy photocopying job, but the copy job on the second is very clear. His characters are well designed and despite a large cast, there’s no difficulty in telling people apart.

-Shawn Hoke, Size Matters (shawnhoke.blogspot.com)



The best of the comics in this set was HABITUAL ENTERTAINMENT #2 ("Fool's Gold"). It's a very clever and amusing story of an unemployed actor who gets a call to be a secret shopper as a quickie job. He looks it as an opportunity to act again. Along the way, he invites his ex-fiance and an old rival to his "performance", which he has advertised all over town. Coincidentally, the new boyfriend of his ex happens to work at the very coffee shop that he was to appear at for his secret shopper job. The narrator of the story is a man in an audience of some kind, recounting the events. The ending gives us a double-take and then a triple-take, as Dinski pulls the rug out from the audience.

What makes this such an effective story is the way Dinski manages to create interesting characters that have their own individual quirks, and then puts them through unusual situations. The little character tangents that he makes often wind up tying directly into the resolution of the story, along with his overall themes, even if it seems like extraneous detail at first. There are lots of side-jokes peppered throughout the story, heightening the sense of absurdity that winds up being the comic's overall theme.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequetart.com)


Price: $6.00

Routine-Poster
Routine-Poster

13 by 17 ½ full-color poster about endless repetition.

Giclee print with silk screen varnish layer.

Routine-PosterMore Details
Reviews:

ROUTINE is actually a comic on a single page of posterboard, in full color. This story is typical of Dinski's strengths as a cartoonist: his sense of panel-to-panel beats and rhythms. In a narrative, he's often fond of using a silent panel, then a narrative caption in a rapid-fire sequence. In this comic, he sets up the boring routine of a businessman in this way. A random bit of near-violence puts his routine out of balance, creating a new, quite warped routine for our hero. As always, Dinksi's page is stylish, spare and puts a bit of distance between reader and story. This is done mostly for comic effect, but there's always something a bit unsettling going on in his stories, and ROUTINE is no exception.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequart.com)

Price: $10.00

Others
Others

Two short stories about the disenchanted and solitary.

Nine pages, hand sewn binding.

OthersMore Details
Reviews:

OTHERS, as described in the subtitle, is "two short stories about the disenchanted and solitary". The first story, "The Pressman", is a funny and clever account of a night worker at a newspaper. For fun, he enjoys going to other people's jobs and blending into the background. He watches a corporate scandal unfold and is also in the background at the police station where they uncover the scandal. It's unclear, but implied, if he has any role in the scandal unfolding. "Get Away From Me" is about crowds, and a bird's pontification thereon. After complaining about crowds of people, he desperately tries to join up with a crowd of birds. As always, Dinski's style is utilitarian and assured. His layouts and figures don't dazzle, but instead serve the story and composition. Like many talented minicomics artists, I'm curious to see what he could do with long-form stories.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequart.com)

The format of Others is a touch less gimmicky, but the package retains Dinski’s affinity to high-grade paper stock and silkscreen, bound together by a single twine tied around the top, for rather stunning results.

Others continued two rather short stories—running four and five pages, respectively—in fact, everything about Others is miniature, from the page-count, to the text, to the paper dimensions, to Dinski’s own simple, but detailed art, which manages to cram a good deal of lines into every panel, while maintaining it clean presentation.

The lead story, The Pressman, is a hilarious concept, which is over long before it has a chance to grow tedious. The protagonist, a nightshift printer at a daily paper, spends his daytime following office workers around, getting lunch where they do, sitting in traffic for giggles, and watching them in their workspace, veiled by little more than a potted plant (which, in Dinski’s quasi-cartoon reality, seems to do the trick). In five tiny pages, the story manages to come full-circle, a testament to Dinksi’s storytelling talents.

Printed on orange ink (versus Pressman’s navy blue), Get Away is narrated by a bird who is rather unimpressed by the pack mentality of the humans in the city below. Get Away is even more simple in its storytelling (and is fittingly a page shorter), and opts to end the proceedings on something rather like a moal, but is still a rather charming little end to a rather charming little package.

-Brian Heater, The Daily Cross Hatch (thedailycrosshatch.com)


Price: $5.00

An Endorsement of Smoking
An Endorsement of Smoking

If you’re cool, you’ll give it a try.

2-Color Silk Screen Cover.

An Endorsement of SmokingMore Details
Reviews:

Will Dinski is a favorite of mine, and his two new minis did not disappoint. ENDORSEMENT OF SMOKING is a fold-out mini designed to look like a pack of cigarettes. Once unfolded, the back of the mini shows cigarettes. The front of the mini has a strip where a character discusses the nature of addiction. The payoff, both verbally and visually, is quite satisfying, though on a small scale. What I like most about it is that it couldn't possibly work in any other format than this mini. The payoff is clever, made moreso because of the format.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequart.com)



Here's a short mini from Will that unfortunately defies scanning. The cover looks like a pack of cigarettes (in case you can't tell from the scan) and the comic folds open into essentially one big page. It really would give too much away if I were to scan a chunk of it, and you can see his artwork above anyway, so just look around. The story here is as it says, an endorsement of smoking. Will goes into the nature of addiction, the social stigma against it and gaining the ability to tell the difference between a need and a want. Yes, he really does do all that in one giant page. Another absolutely gorgeous book from Will, and I can't think of a single bad thing to say about it.

-Optical Sloth (opticalsloth.com)

Price: $5.00

Are You Often Impulsive in Your Behavior?
Are You Often Impulsive in Your Behavior?

A Scientology recuitment tool.

8 by 8, two color silk screen.

Are You Often Impulsive in Your Behavior?More Details
Reviews:

Will’s comic is about taking a Scientology personality test in Minnesota. The comic is on one large sheet of cardstock, folded over twice to the size of a .45 record sleeve. The resulting book adds up to 4 pages and folds out to a large scale reproduction of Will’s test printed on the back of the sheet. The comic uses a combination of pleasing panel design, using mostly small squares filled with either drawings or dialogue as well as a strong use of 2 colors. Basically, the comic is well designed, drawn, and written, using the questions of the test against the testers in an effective way. Definitely seek Mr. Dinski out. He’d be a great candidate for an anthology.

-Robert Goodin, Cartoonist

...BEHAVIOR is a clever comic, also printed on cardstock. This one is meant to be folded so as to form four pages on one side. It's a story about Dinski taking a test at a Scientologist recruitment center on a whim, and the back of the comic has the results of his test. Once again, Dinski's control of story-beats drive the comic, as he breaks up the narrative with actual questions from the test. He did this to show how the way they were worded was designed to emphasize the test-taker's feelings of paranoia and inferiority. The results made Dinski out to be anxious, paranoid, critical, withdrawn, depressed, withdrawn and hyperactive (?). The punchline was that Dinski was expecting a recruiting pitch, but instead got sent on his way. The use of the test's questions dryly sets up Dinski's own critique of the proceedings in an indirect and amusing way. As always, a Will Dinski comic is smart, off-beat and comics in their purest sense; there's no way I could experience these stories as anything but comics.

-Rob Clough, Hi-Low (sequart.com)

Price: $4.00




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