Jeffrey, Nick – Anhedonia #1

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Anhedonia #1

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen a comic from Nick (or is that one year? Ah, who can tell with linear time), and this one is full of all sorts of short pieces. But there’s a larger theme at work, so there’s that. I should point out early on that Nick included two recent rejection letters from publishers for his comic in this issue, and the man has been around for ages, so if you haven’t liked his past work there’s a good chance that you won’t care for this one. Granted, he’s done a wide range of stuff over the last 5 years, but this one is back to the basics: gore, violence, poop, fighting babies, those sorts of things. The story that runs through the smaller pieces is about a man who’s trying to sell “make the giggles,” which I can’t really explain adequately so I’m not even going to try. The salesman becomes increasingly desperate and sad as people fail to buy his product, until he is suddenly replaced by another informercial, which is the way of things these days. Other stories include a notably grim tale about a dog that’s trapped in the ice and an attempted rescue, a creepy albino after a football game, fighting babies (what, you thought I was kidding?), dog violence, how Kirk Cameron gets his kids to listen to him, being drunk and racist on a bus, being a racist duck (with a twist ending), a number of three panel strips all crammed into one page, and space boobs. I’ll admit that a few pieces seemed to just drift off without accomplishing all that much (the story about the space boobs and albino football player), but overall it was still a pile of mostly funny comics. Which were also incredibly offensive to most sentient humans, just in case you were offended by… oh, lots of different things. $3.50