I came into Rings skeptical of its staying power, a perception built over several failed attempts to educate myself on reggae. The lack of success in these endeavors leaves me unsophisticated enough to know if Sean Bones plays quality reggae or not. I do know I enjoy it.

Genre conventions are mixed with indie scene lyrics (you’ll find no protest songs here). The tracks are kept simple and interesting, no mean feat in a genre easily ruined by overplaying. Rings falls off in the second half, “Smoke Rings” being the only standout, leaving me with that familiar suspicion this album will get a lot of play in the dying summer months then be relegated by Smart Playlist to Summer 2010.

Recommended Tracks: Act So Casual, Smoke Rings

Luxury Wafers has a great session with Sean Bones here.

You can buy Rings at Amazon and eMusic.

“Act So Casual” live at Piano’s in New York, NY on 5/6/09:

Like most sampler albums, it’s a grab bag, using bigger names (Bad Religion, NOFX) as incentive to try newer artists.

Despite my punk roots, a lot of this just feels too young for me, having already gone through the stage bands like Sing It Loud and All Time Low inhabit. The target audience for this is junior high girls, which I don’t mean as an insult (Green Day has done some great work aimed at this exact demographic). For more adult listeners Cash Cash mines the Daft Punk sound with “Party In Your Bedroom” and Westbound Train pulls some reggae out with “Check Your Time,” but both end up sounding rote.

The big guns split results. NOFX’s “Creeping Out Sara,” a recount of meeting Tegan and Sara‘s Sara (or was it Tegan) at music festival, is predictably hilarious (“I told her I was a big fan of her band, she asked me if I had a favorite song, I admitted I’d never actually heard them but I liked k.d. lang”) but an acoustic version of Bad Religion’s “Sorrow” unfortunately doesn’t work as well as the impactful electric version on The Process of Belief. The only keeper for me was Jeffree Star‘s “Prisoner,” an electro rock stomper with a catchy club feel.

Recommended Tracks: “Prisoner” by Jeffree Star, “Creeping Out Sara” by NOFX

You can download it free through iTunes using this redeem code.

Cooke comes from the Bruce Timm school of art. His drawing has an animation feel, brush stroke lines, and backgrounds are suggested rather than rendered in minute detail. His page composition is superb, bring a cinematic feel.

Ego & Other Tails is a collection of six stories (only four of which have Cooke’s art), but a mere two of these are worth discussing herein. The first, “Ego,” is a Batman story. It sometimes seems everyone who writes a Batman comic starts with a psychological analysis story. Cooke pulls it off better than most, seeing Batman as a manifestation of “make your weakness your weapon” strategy. Though, with neither a shift in the character’s thinking or groundbreaking presentation, this comes off as just a reaffirmation of purpose. Which, in reader terms, equals “yawn.”

Two things Cooke does best is Catwoman and noir, so the big treat of this book is “Selina’s Big Score,” a Catwoman story without the Catwoman costume. It’s a heist story done straight noir, with all the themes of desire leading to destruction. Really it’s the only compelling reason to own Ego & Other Tails, but this story is also available in trade paperback by itself (including a gallery of covers and pinups), so nothing new is being offered here. However, since the Selina’s Big Score trade is out of print, you can save some hassle, buy Ego & Other Tails, and just ignore the deadwood.

You can buy Batman: Ego and Other Tails on Amazon.