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Gibbons, Jeff – Teeth
Teeth
Have you ever had a moment of terror while you were chomping down on a nut, or taffy, or a piece of popcorn, where you heard what sounds like an unusually loud cracking/crunching noise? Depending on where you were when this happened, you might have had to spend several minutes or even hours unable to completely check your teeth, wondering if you had done yourself any permanent damage, with plenty of time to imagine all sorts of horrible changes that would come to your life because of your shattered tooth/teeth. That particular feeling sums up this comic pretty well. It’s a brisk seven pages of comic, in which we see our hero anxiously checking his teeth in a mirror (using the trick of sneaking up on yourself, walking away and then turning back before quickly checking again), explaining to a friend why he’s acting so strangely, and listening to advice from another friend about his obvious need to live a little. It’s a claustrophobic and creepy little book, and it’s hard to imagine this subject matter being covered any better. No price, and from his website it looks like Jeff is reworking some of his comics, but I’d guess that $2-3 would get you a copy of this one.
Gibbons, Jeff – The Death and Damnation of Pretty Jeff
The Death and Damnation of Pretty Jeff
Here’s to taking the mystery out of comic titles! Seriously, you already have a pretty good clue as to what this comic is about. “Pretty Jeff” (a stand-in for the creator Jeff, or a huge coincidence?) is riding a roller coaster, said roller coaster crashes to the ground, and he “wakes up” to see death hovering over him. From there we’re treated to exactly how pathetic the life of Pretty Jeff was (death was watching for his whole life but ended up just cutting and pasting the same pictures of him playing video games and watching tv as the recap of his life), the reason why Pretty Jeff was going to hell, the suggestion box in hell, watching the big entertainment in hell (watching Hitler get tortured in various ways), meeting Satan and learning the conditions of his captivity. These were clearly done as either daily or weekly strips, as they all have the same format and all end in some form of a punchline. Still, kudos to Jeff for keeping the “previously on” recaps short and having them make sense in the context of each comic. This comic also switches over to full color after the first half of the book (guessing that’s when he changed the strip online and kept it for the collected edition, but who knows?), and ends on a two part story that you fold down. That part of things is an unsightly mess, but as the glue only makes the back cover look all crumpled and weird it’s not the biggest deal in the world. So: a funny collection of short pieces that add up to a greater whole, combined with an excellently anti-climatic ending. No sir, no bitching from me at all. No price, but as this gets all colorized about halfway through I’m guessing $4.
