This, the first issue of Krachmacher contains three stories: The main story, At the Shore centers around Marianne, a teenager who finds herself involved in a seemingly mundane adventure that grows increasingly more bizarre as she and her friends become integral players in it. This quirky character drama introduces Marianne and her four friends. The other, more subtle, narrative arc of At the shore revolves around the surreal flashbacks Marianne suffers through—taking her back to memories of her family and her strange childhood. The flashbacks maintain a level of magic realism; we don’t quite know if they’re truth or fiction, but it reveals to the reader how desperate Marianne is to be understood by her friends, who, at this stage of the narrative, would rather not get involved.
The other shorter stories feature an elderly robot abductee, and a continuation of Jim's Series from Meathaus about Cedrick, a guy in a wolf hat and his friend, a pork roast.
The book’s title, Krachmacher, translates as “noise maker”. And while it’s not terribly important that this fact be understood by the reader, it does mirror the conflicts that many of the characters Jim Campbell writes about face—overwhelmed with emotion, they make noise, either real or metaphorical, to drown out their problems.

Krachmacher features some poetical editing by Michael Herring, and a nice back page pinup by Misung Stevenson
By Jim Campbell, for Mature Readers, 48 pages, FULL COLOR, deluxe graphic novel, 6” by 71⁄2”, $6.50. ISBN: 1-891867-85-7