Jackson, Ed – Hard Times #9

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Hard Times #9

Regular readers of this site probably already figured out that I occasionally wander all over the map from review to review.  For example, if you look up at the review for the last issue, I said that all the unerased pencil lines grew on me after awhile, that they fleshed out the characters.  This time around, it gets on my nerves in  a big way.  It just looks like crap way too much of the time, and while an argument could be made for leaving some of the lines on the characters, when you’re forgetting to erase the pencil lines under whole blocks of text, it makes the comic almost impossible to read.  So how about the content?  It’s the same format, except this time it’s an over the hill superhero trying to make an honest living.  He gets his first paycheck (and considers real estate fraud), tries life as a telemarketer, gives up and gets drunk, considers becoming a super villain, and eventually starts up an internet business and makes a few book.  These are all four panel strips, mostly with some form of a punchline at the end.  Some are funny, some not so much, but they’re all at least decent.  Sadly, none of it matters as those pencil lines just wore me down over the course of the book.  I’ve said it many times over the years, but it’s such an easy thing to fix that it just gets on my nerves.  Still no price, so I’ll go with $1 again, and you might like it just fine if you’re a little less annoyed about this sort of thing than I am…