Norhanian, Aaron – Bad Energy

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Bad Energy

Aaron asked me in his letter to be brutally honest in this review, so I’ll start off with my main problem with the book: the utter lack of contact information.  It’s a moot point for me, as he included his name and website with the book, but always, ALWAYS assume that somebody somewhere is going to see your comic at a store, or see it sitting at your table during a con (during the five minutes you leave your table).  They’ll pick it up, chances are with other comics (at either a store or a con, as who only buys one comic?),   and when they read it later they might check online for some of their favorites, but comics like this with no information of any kind get set aside and forgotten.  Go ahead, try just searching for “Bad Energy” online.  The closest you get is the “Gimme Shelter” logo on the back, which happens to be more or less the name of his blog.  So: always include some kind of contact information somewhere in your comic!  Now that I have that out of the way, on to the other things I didn’t like.  There was… hm.  Nope, I pretty much liked the comic itself.  This is the story of The Cartoonist, constantly belittled by life for his silly “hobby”, always managing to go on in a world of negative energy and contempt for him.  All of this energy ends up in his comic, with disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.  This was a thoroughly engaging “fuck you” to the rest of the world.  The art was fantastic (I suppose it is possible to go wrong with brains flying out of the back of the head due to reading comics, but Aaron depicts it beautifully), the story wrapped itself up nicely and the whole thing was the perfect length.  Not too much to complain about, is there?  So you have my one complaint that has nothing to do with the content of the book, then my unreserved praise for the rest of it.  Make up your own minds.  Oh, and there is no price, which is also a pet peeve of mine, but somehow significantly more minor.  I’m guessing $2 for no reason at all.