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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

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Bad Breath Comics #4

Is it still OK to give advice if it’s totally useless? No? You’re right, I don’t think so either. That being said, her’s some useless advice for Josh: his covers could use some work. Now here’s where it gets useless: I don’t have very good advice for the guy on how to make them better. I don’t care for the plain white borders on the covers, and keep the self-deprecation to the inside of the comic please, as you never know who’s going to be instantly turned off by that cover saying that there is no creativity in this book. That being said, his method enables him to sell these comics for $2 each, which is a damned good way for him to get people to pick up his books, and people should be reading these. That sample is brilliant, and part of its brilliance is the fact that nothing else in the comic is remotely like it. He has a nice wide range of topics in here and sure, they’re not all brilliant, but I love the fact that he’s trying so hard in so many different directions. First off there’s the intro and outro by Stepbrother Scary (kind of a Crypt Keeper-esque character), and I’m always a sucker for those bad puns. Actual comics in here deal with such subjects as a singing masked cowboy band rescuing a clothed platypus, fake covers from old comics, a two pager about “Satanama” that flew right by me, why a CD that you hate upon the initial listening can sound fantastic a few years later to you, and a continuing (?) story dealing with a young woman going home from work for the weekend and a creepy guy on the bus with an obvious hidden camera. There are also two longer pieces that I loved in different ways about History vs. America (featuring an obvious Bill O’Reilly stand-in and dealing with the need to have some idea of the historical relevance of current events) and taking a walk on a Saturday afternoon and seeing all of the televisions on inside with nobody watching them and nobody else outside on such a nice day. That second story actually managed something of a happy ending, even though I’m not supposed to mention such things. This whole review is a long-winded way of my saying that I love the vast majority of this comic (and of this series that I’ve seen so far) but think that a better cover would help it out. That being said, I should at least mention that I loved the sheer ridiculousness of that back cover, so make of that what you will. $2

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Bad Breath Comics #3

“Too” and “to” are two completely different words. Just saying, as that was the only glaringly obnoxious thing that stood out to me from this comic. Not that Josh is the only person who makes that mistake (far from it, sadly) but it still bugs the hell out of me every time I see it. So how about the content? It was strange and uneven at times, with hints of possible greatness to come. Or not, but I see potential. Stories in here that I enjoyed include an old man and his seagulls, the one about car auctions (until it devolved into utter nonsense in the last few panels, which sure looked to me like another one of those “I have no idea how to end this so I’ll just stop” stories), a long but oddly rewarding setup for a dragon pun, the CEO asking for more money on a street corner, a wordless protest against bras and fights (I think that’s what it was about anyway, but in any case it was a good excuse to have a naked woman running around for a few pages), and the dumb fuck trying to find a box of cereal. The long piece about a fake cola company trying to win over the public while doing some horrible stuff behind the scenes didn’t always hold together very well and it had another awkward ending, but I’m all for somebody at least trying to be political in their comics. Things have been falling to shit for ages now and people who speak up even a little bit should be encouraged. That cover is delightfully awkward, with nothing to do with the contents, and the back cover is pretty great too. That seems to be pretty much all of the stories that I enjoyed at least a little bit, and when I say that this was uneven I mean that most of the individual stories felt that way, but this also looks like early days for Josh in the comics business. With that considered he’s off to a fine start on his way to putting out 6-12 more comics of increasing quality until he takes a proper job and leaves all this behind. Not that I’m feeling overly cynical today or anything. But hey, $2 for this much content is a steal any way you look at it.