REVIEW: Offering

Story: Ken Lowery & Kevin Warren
Art: Kevin Warren
Review: Will Dubbeld

Because, dear readers, you have to support the little guy.
Repeat it. Make it your mantra.
Practice it.
Whenever small press or self-published books creep across your nerd-radar, pick 'em up. Sometimes (oftentimes) they cost a bit more, but publishing funnybooks ain't cheap.
Suck it up and drop an extra buck or two.

Offering is not, however, a pricey book.
More on that later.

Offering plays on some classic literary tropes, particularly from the horror genre, and tweaks them a bit.
The stage is set in some foreign land or another, features a local guide, a hapless Western couple, and a foreboding cave. Withholding spoilers, Lowery does a phenomenal job of telling a tight, well-done horror story in the span of under 20 pages.  

There's quite a few indie books that can't accomplish in 4 issues what Offering does in one. This book is tight, ladies and gentlemen. Beginning, middle, and end are all three crafted with a higher level of proficiency than you usually find in books from the Big Two, much less a self-published indie.
There's a couple of pages completely devoid of dialogue and completely emote deep storytelling without exposition, and I'm hard-pressed to find equally smart writing in most contemporary comics.

Kevin Warren's art is crisp, black & white line work which rides the line between cartooning and classic comic illustration. It harkens back to a period before comicdom was obsessed with hyper-realism and relied on the 'less is more' approach.
There's no washes or greys in this art, either. Stark black and white is the name of the game.

One of the best parts about Offering?
Price point.
I'm not going to bother telling you how much the single issue costs. It's irrelevant, because Lowery sells a bundle of four (4!) of his self-published books for something like 12 bucks plus shipping.

Offering, The Night Driver, Like A Virus, and June Valentine & the Massacres are all available from http://kenlowery.storenvy.com/ individually, a 'you pick three' bundle, or you could not be a cheapskate and just but all four.
Seriously, it's 3 dollars and change per issue at that point. You pay more than that to read about Flash fighting Mirror Master for the umpteenth time.
Go buy some good indie books and support the little guy.
Because you have to support the little guy.