Jakes, Adam – Simpler Times

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Simpler Times

Huzzah, an e-mail address!  It’s still not a website but at least it’s a quick way of contacting the guy, as if you check my review for his last comic you’ll see that he only listed a postal address.  One quick complaint before I launch into the praise: more fat people please!  I don’t mean obese, but every character in this book is full of bulging muscles with 0% body fat.  Granted, we learn in this issue that these people have exceptionally long lives and 20 years of solid training would make you pretty buff, but at least some fans of small press books have a natural aversion to their character being too muscley.  This book is way too funny for people to not even give it a chance because everybody looks ripped.  Now that I have that thoroughly ridiculous complaint out of the way, this is one great comic.  Well, maybe parts of the story seem a bit rushed, but a little bit of funny goes a long way, and this book has a lot of funny.  The one-liners are fast and furious and the vast majority of them hit the mark; I even laughed out loud a few times, which remains a rare occurrence while reading comics.  Crap, I should get to the plot.  This comes after the events in “Dark Dreams” (which was apparently also known as Floid #4, with this one being Floid #5), which I learned thanks to the handy comic listing in the back.  No recap this time around though, although the comic did a decent job of that on its own.  So Guedo is still stuck in time, fighting whatever looks like a good fight, and as he dozes we get to see his origin story.  He trained for decades with his sister, their teacher was coerced into graduating them before he thought they were ready, they meet up with Floid, and I don’t want to spoil any more, sorry.  The story wasn’t always the most complicated thing in the world, but the constant humor propelled it past any weak spots.  It’s well worth a look if you’re not scared off by too many muscles.  I’d be interested in seeing the early issues just to check if he honed his art or his humor over the years, or if it’s possible that he was this polished when he started.  No price again but it’s another hefty offering, so $5?