Reinwald, Josh & Rosenberg, Justin – Crass Sophisticate #25

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Crass Sophisticate #25

As I’ve been a fan of the past two issues, it’s only fair to start this one off with a complaint (even though I liked this one too overall): erase the damned pencil lettering!  To those of you who don’t make your own comics (which is probably about two of you), writers often pencil in their dialogue in the word balloons and then ink over it, making it easier to change dialogue without having to redraw the whole panel.  Sometimes writers get lazy and/or stuck at deadline time (usually meaning a convention) and don’t get rid of all the pencils.  That can be mildly annoying or, as in the case of this issue when large chunks are unerased, very annoying.  How about the comic itself?  Once you look past that issue (which is, admittedly, probably a minor thing for most people), Josh and Justin have managed to put out another thoroughly entertaining comic.  This time around Justin owns a smoothie shop, and the story begins with Josh coming for a visit, just in time for “chalk time”.  This is the time of the day where the attractive girl from the cafe across the street comes out and writes the specials of the day down on a chalk board, which means she’ll have to bend over and Justin has the highlight of his day: seeing an attractive female bend over.  He’s “fake dating” (just what it sound like) her as well as the lead singer of a band.  Meanwhile, Carl is a slobbish regular customer (who plays a role in things later, as you can probably guess if I tell you that he’s the bleeding guy from the cover) and Josh has found a rotisserie chicken device by a dumpster, but can’t convince Justin to use it in his shop.  Justin, however, sees an interview with his other fake girlfriend (the one in a band) and learns that her favorite things in the world are rotisserie chicken, smoothies and cigarettes (he also sells cigarettes).  The rest of the issue involves Justin getting into more and more trouble for not knowing the first thing about raising chickens or hiring immigrant workers and tracking down his fake singer girlfriend in the hopes of giving her a flier for his smoothie/chicken shop.  Like I said, this has been a consistently entertaining series, and kudos to them for making it to #25.  Next time just erase the lettering, OK?  $2