Ullman, Robert – Traffic & Weather

Website

Traffic & Weather

Well, whatever else I can say about running this website for almost 8 years, it has succeeded in one of my more selfish goals: getting free comics from some of my favorite creators.  That’s right suckers, you all thought I was promoting small press work, trying to spread the word about all the talent out there, when all I was doing was secretly trying to find a way to stop paying for comics.  Once I break through to the fancypants at Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and Top Shelf my plan will be a complete success!  Ahem.  This comic reprints a weekly local strip Rob does (which you can find here), and these things should be much more common than they are.  Rob talks about his beloved Pittsburgh teams, his annoyances with traffic, buying crappy Christmas lights, the rising price of food versus the lowering price of gas, getting great seats at a Cub’s game, a broken caller I.D., cheap lousy haircuts, getting a bit too much into football games, a perfect day with the family, almost mowing the lawn for a lazy neighbor and finding out that his small child actually travels quite well.  It cheapens the strips to put them all in bullet point form like that, as Rob has always had a keen eye for pointing out the little things, and is probably at his best detailing these quiet little moments of family life.  Here’s hoping he keeps that weekly strip in an economy where many papers are slashing their comics section (often their cheapest and most viewed section, but nobody ever accused current newspaper executives of being good business people), as there’s some great stuff in this little collection.  I’m not seeing this on his website (but if he didn’t have any copies available he probably wouldn’t have sent one to me), but here’s guessing that it’s, oh, $2.50