I want to eat Spike's brain.

The sheer amount of inventiveness that she puts into Templar, AZ makes me weep with inadequacy. Alien invasions? Nah. Wars gone awry? Proably not. Forget the big stuff. You won't find it here. What's compelling about this world is the little things. How the class restaurant has endangered species on the menu and riot squad outside to keep the everpresent protestors at bay. The way the talk show hosts wear togas, or how people still worship the old Egyptian pantheon. But only in coffee shops. Or something like that.

Ostensibly, this story revolves around Ben, but for a writer who's supposed to be reporting on 'The Scene', he sure doesn't get out much. It's up to his obnoxiously awesome housemate Reagan to plant a foot in his ass and get him out the door. That's pretty important, because it's partly through his eye that we get to see these bizarre cultures unfold.

Of course, all this neglects that Spike's artwork is positively gorgeous. That her razor-sharp wit makes the dialogue sounds like the conversation the next table over, only nastier. Hilariously so.

This comic is a work of art, and it's no wonder it's at the to top of the list, day after day. If you haven't read it already, what's keeping you?

... read it now!

Even though Templar, Arizona is awesome, maybe you should avoid reading it. It's one of those comics that gets in your brain and stays there. The kind that you keep thinking about because it seems to open up so many cool possibilities.

The comic follows Ben, a quiet shut-in of a journalist, who is forced to become familiar with the town called Templar. His guide is the boisterous and intimidating Reagan, who seems to know the place like the back of her hand - the good parts of it, anyway.

A few more likeable and involving characters are introduced, like the mildly retarded rocker Gene and his strange but adorable daughter Zora. But the most interesting character, to me, is Templar itself, and the strange culture its citizens are a part of.

Templar is in some ways a normal American city, in a reality that's slightly different from our own. There's a statue of a sphinx in the town square and, even stranger, one of Jimmy Carter. There's a clay bar, which is what it sounds like and just as cool. There's a restaurant which only serves morally reprehensible food like unborn puppies and such. There's fashions and trends and books and tv shows that seem like they COULD exist in the real world, had the cultural tide gone a slightly different direction at some point in the past. You're left wishing you lived in Templar. Well, sometimes. You start to wonder what else in is Templar, or indeed in the rest of this slightly off world. It's exciting to imagine all the directions it can go in, and which parts we'll be able to explore next.

So why did I say you should maybe avoid reading it? Because its one of those wonderful stories that makes you wish you could write one just like it. The other day I started writing a story about my own fictional alternate-reality town, making up cool soda brands and fashion trends and local history. And then I stopped, and sort of sighed, because I realized that dammit, I was just copying Templar. It just seems like such fun. It's so exciting. Man, I wish I had come up with it first.

On second thought, read the thing anyway. It's way more than worth it. ... read it now!

I have seen the face of my new competitor, and she is the great and surreal SPIKE, who draws the great and surreal comic of TEMPLAR, ARIZONA. Already I'm hooked. If it's not the amazon Reagan, then it's the faceless editor for our protagonist, who is a foul mouthed J. Jonah Jameson, if JJJ were allowed to say such things in the Spider-man comics. This should be a TV show, if only because it's so WEIRD. It's like Spike sees a town in a sideways view, that town you know exists, but seeks to exist only out of the corner of your eye. But here, Spike shows us what such a town could be like if we were able to see it straight on, like an incoming bullet train. This is good stuff. This is surreal stuff. This is Templar, Arizona. Try to understand your stay. ... read it now!

Although it seemed like our world, something was off. The cars all had that Fifties Art Deco look, all the men wore fedoras, and all the gangsters dressed in pin-stripe suits. But then, there were supercomputers, robots, color TV, and even cell phones. The era was never pinned down; Gotham existed just a few degrees off from our own reality.

Remember that concept when reading Templar, Arizona, and you'll do just fine. Set in the fictional title city, within a mostly-fictional state, Templar is shaping up to be a masterpiece of world-building. Sure, anyone can take a bunch of elves and orcs, sketch out a map on a napkin, and make up Seven Eras worth of "The Lore of Mari Shi Sueia" or some other Tolkien-Estate-angering nonsense.

It takes a real steam engine of an imagination to produce a city full of fictional sports, fictional chain restaurants, even fictional sub-cultures so believable that, mark my words, people are going to think they are real. Kids in Seattle are going to start pinning hearts to their sleeves because they heard all the cool kids in some town called Templar are doing it. Okay, maybe not, but you have to admit it sounds like something kids would do. Oprah would tell viewers it's a warning sign that your child's snorting Windex.

Into this world-not-so-far-away, thrust fresh, interesting, maybe-almost over-the-top characters, fill with Spike's usual extremely natural dialogue, shake well over some creative insults, and you get a lot of hyphens. You also get Templar, definitely worth a read.

... read it now!

If Benjamin Kowalski just had a door that locked, things in his life would be a little easier. Sure, his boss at the newspaper would still wake him up early in the morning to yell at him over the phone, but his neighbour's kid wouldn't break in to use his shower and steal his clothes. And he wouldn't have to deal with Reagan.
But no, his door is a piece of crap and so here he is, drug outside by a 300-pound Sicilian chunk of Amazonia to interact with the slightly taupe, rather alternate, Templar, Arizona.
Luckily, Ben's a nice guy. Almost a pushover, you'd call him. So he's game for a little adventure, to take in the sights. I'm sure he won't mind your company. ... read it now!

Assuming there are an infinite amount of alternate universes, Templar, Arizona takes place in an alternate universe that is a few degrees away from our own. This isn't the Twilight Zone, or the Outer Limits. It's just different enough from our world to say, "oh that's strange..." So far the story is focusing on Ben, who apparently doesn't leave his apartment very much. His friend Reagan is about to take him on a tour of Templar, a town full of strange sub-cultures, and an odd history. The amount of time and imagination Spike has put into developing the world of Templar is absolutely astonishing. Trust me on this, the sheer depth of what she has developed hasn't even begun to show up on the pages yet. I highly reccomend following this comic, because it's going places; wonderful and interesting places. ... read it now!