Juresko, Josh – Bad Breath Comics #5

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Bad Breath Comics #5

It’s the constant danger of comics made of a number of short stories: there are bound to be some stinkers in the bunch. Or if not necessarily “stinkers,” then definitely lower down on the “meh” scale. Josh’s covers also don’t seem to have much of anything to do with the interior, which is a perfectly valid option, but if you only bought this because you love flying cars you’ll end up disappointed. These books are narrated by a Crypt Keeper-esque dude called “Step-Brother Scary,” which is something that I think should be in more comics, but I’m not the boss of the world. Things start off a little awkwardly with a story about a young man who is obsessed with a certain type of candy bar, but only for the wrappers. This story is all over the map, as the young man veers away from people to avoid incidental eye contact but also offers the candy to strangers so that they can eat it and give him the wrappers. The “why” of this is never established, unless it’s just for the sake of telling a brief story about a creepy dude. Josh also has a few spelling mistakes where he uses a word that sounds like the word he’s supposed to be using, to the point that I started wondering if he was doing it on purpose. If so, bravo! If not, everybody knows that you can plug any word into Google and the definition is usually one of the first things that comes up, right? Just saying that’s it a very easy thing to fix. Other pieces in here involve a misunderstanding involving fishing, an honest group reaction to a self help class, the tai-chi guy, hijinx with a grown-up in a bee costume, a haunted house conversation that’s all build-up with no payoff (but it’s still funny), a duck buying back his stolen bike, an introverted guy giving a speech, two parking lots, and a story about a young woman falling asleep on the bus that goes absolutely nowhere (but is, for some reason, listed as “to be continued”). The humor was a bit dopier than my preference at times (“Wall-Fart” instead of “Wal-Mart” probably isn’t going to cause a whole bunch of people to guffaw), but there’s still enough good stuff in here to be worth a look. And that page I sampled below was brilliant. $2