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H., Eric – Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #3 – The Chicken Who Loved Me Part 1
Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #3 – The Chicken Who Loved Me Part 1
Finally, Chickenbot gets to pick a cool job! After suffering through some dangerous and awkward temp jobs, Chickenbot walks into the temp agency and sees “Spy” as an option. He can’t resist, naturally, and us readers end up with what is the most completely satisfying Chickenbot tale yet. Don’t get me wrong, all of them have had their moments, and it would be a stretch to call any of them bad. This one just has the feeling of an artist that is hitting his stride with a character, and kudos to Eric for putting these issues out so quickly while still increasing the quality of his art each time around. That’s a formula for good things happening, if there is any justice in the world. There’s not, you say? Well crap. At least he still gets the satisfaction of making a great comic, and the rest of us get the satisfaction of reading it. Back to the story! Chickenbot gets acquainted with all the doodads that spies get to play with and learns of his mission to meet with an informant about a plot to poison chocolate. Naturally his informant is assassinated just before he gets to the good part, so Chickenbot has to improvise a bit to get closer to the man doing all the poisoning. And hey, it is a spy story, so it wouldn’t be complete without Chickenbot seducing the girlfriend of one of the major players in the plot. Any more would give away too much for my tastes, but a few James Bond bits are cleverly included, there were so many genuinely funny pages that I had real trouble picking just one (and only settled on this one because it’s vague enough to not give anything too major away) and things have been set up nicely for the next issue. His website is currently about 2/3 of the way through this issue, so head on over there and check it out if you like, but at this point people should really be getting on that Chickenbot bandwagon regardless. Also, as of an older update on his site, he seems to be getting down on the whole webcomics thing, which is perfectly understandable for people who aren’t independently wealthy and have a functioning brain. I’ll bet a few orders from you folks would perk him right up, and you’re only hurting yourself by not reading this series, so do the right thing, eh? No price listed, but something this hefty should be in the $5 range.
H., Eric – Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #2
Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #2
Eric made the decision to keep his comics self-contained after putting out the first half of the first “Odd Jobs,” and can I just reiterate that it was an excellent idea. This issue features out hero going back out to find another job and, as always, his options are rather limited. He goes with “paranormal investigator” over “gnome wrangler”and “dragon slayer” and ends up trying to figure out the truth about a UFO sighting. He heads out to the farm (and alien sightings are always on or near a farm), pokes around a bit and finds prairie dogs with hats firmly attached to their heads and the head farmer spontaneously combusts. Chickenbot seemingly has no fear, as he finds out the truth about the aliens and hitches a ride up to their ship. I won’t ruin any more of it, but I will say that he could have picked “dragon slayer” right off the bat and saved himself a few steps. Sure, putting these comics out as self-contained stories means there’s going to be more time between issues, but every one of these so far has been a treat. “Funny and smart” is a big part of what I look for in comics, and this one has both qualities in large lumps. The only trouble is with Eric’s website as, even though it has the entire comic available for free, there’s no link to any place to actually buy a copy. Wait, did I just say that getting to read his comic for free was a bad thing? I’ve been doing this too long. Clearly it’s a good thing for us comic readers, but if Eric is going to be nice enough to post the entire thing he maybe should have a link for people who like to own physical copies of comics. And some indication of the price. It’s a hefty thing, so I’m going to say $5 randomly, but I couldn’t tell you where to get a copy.
