This is one of the more interesting issues of Mome thus far, primarily because of the strong contributions from Tim Hensley and Lewis Trondheim, along with a rewarding piece from newcomer Emile Bravo. Gary Groth's interview with Tim Hensley is also illuminating, and provides some genuine insights into the quirky work of this emerging master.

The let-downs herein are the inevitable contributions from the vastly over-rated crowd of Mome regulars consisting of Jeffrey Brown, Sophie Crumb, and David Heatley. It must be considered a blessing that Ms. Crumb contributes only three pages of material, none of it in the form of her usual tedious portraits of annoying young losers. Mr. Brown's contribution is, alas, his usual autobiographical navel-gazing, dressed up as some sort of commentary on "everyday terrorists". As with most of Mr. Brown's work, one quickly discovers that watching paint dry is considerably more entertaining than reading his comics. David Heatley's stock dream narratives are so boring and poorly drawn they can almost make the reader nostalgic for one of Joe Matt's masturbation comics, which apparently are not the worst thing in the universe of indy comics after all.

Despite the flaws mentioned above, the sixth issue of Mome includes decent contributions from Martin Cendreda and R. Kikuo Johnson, as well as passable items from Jonathan Bennett and Anders Nilson. If one can ignore the sub-par work of Brown, Crumb, and Heatley, it is entirely possible to regard this as one of the stronger Mome issues to date. ( )