Poland, Jason – Robbie and Bobby

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Robbie and Bobby

It took me a lot of years, but I’m officially starting to regret not paying any attention to web comics for this long. Sure, I’m relatively busy keeping up with printed small press comics (which is also why I’ve ignored text zines for years), but great stuff does exist out there that I’ve never seen. Luckily people like Jason occasionally send me a copy of their first book, so at least I can get caught up on it after the fact. If you’ve never seen any of his strips and are about to run away after seeing a picture of a kid and a robot on that cover, don’t panic: this is some uniquely strange and funny stuff, and adorable kid poses will not be found in this volume. In fact, Bobby (who is the boy, not the robot, in case you were wondering) doesn’t seem to have any kind of authority figures in his life outside of Robbie, and it’s very much up for debate whether or not Robbie is even supposed to fill that role. Instead these two get up to all sorts of (mostly) good-natured trouble that may or may not be wrapped up by the end of the strip. Unless one or both of them end up dead, but that little problem is always corrected by the start of the next strip. So what’s it all about? Bobby is a young boy whose main interests seem to be pizza, Robbie, taking part in whatever adventure crosses his path and occasionally trying to impress a girl. Robbie… is. We don’t get an origin story and we really don’t need it, but he’s always there, either taking care of or taking advantage of Bobby. Some of the many subjects tackled in this mammoth (120+ pages) book include Robbie’s awesome power form, some seemingly sweet birds taking some of Bobby’s hair, the most terrifying strip I’ve ever seen involving a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Science Cat calling for help, the war against math users, marrying a pizza, and turning into a Netflix envelope to win hide and seek. Strips range from the very occasional three panel format to several pages long and damned near all of them either made me chuckle or at least smile, which is fairly remarkable in a book this varied. There are also some of his college strips in the back (which could maybe all come together in a single volume if this one is successful, hint hint) and a few pages done by guest artists which also managed to be hilarious. Maybe you’re like me and you don’t really read webcomics, but it would be a good idea to bookmark his site now and go back through it at your leisure. You’ll thank me later…