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Various Artists – The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
Do you like your comics funny? Do you like some or most of the creators I listed in the tags section (right below this post, in big letters, you can’t miss them)? Then this one should be an easy call for you. There, now that I’ve made that case, I’ll go about my afternoon… wait, you want something of substance? Egh, fine. Laurent Barnett does the “Me Likes You” comics (which you should already be reading on a regular basis), and she was one of the editors, so there, that’s substantive. Strips in here include Noah Van Sciver’s fever dreams (both with and without music), funny jokes that aren’t really jokes by Bort, Martha Keavney’s tales of a pet human, Nikki Burch showing us that saying “that’s what she said” too many times will end up with you getting what you deserve, Anne Emond’s cat style, Sam Spina’s ridiculously awesome sex comic, a couple of pages of single panel jokes by Sam Henderson (which should be worth the price of admission right there), Grant Snider’s fears and feats (he had four pages of strips and I don’t want to ruin any of them), KC Green’s depressed fish, Jane Mai’s dream of male lingerie, Nathan Bulmer’s tale of ninja tricks, Julia Wertz’ attempt to get serious and Ian Anderson’s tale of a bear that’s just trying to fit in. But wait, there’s more! And you can discover it for yourself if you buy this. Unless you just have an unnatural hatred for all anthologies, which I guess I could almost understand, but it makes no sense to hate the good ones too, and this is one of the good ones. Hell, just pick three of the names of people who contributed to this, go to their websites and see what there is to see. If you don’t laugh once then I release you from your duty to buy this, but seriously, good luck with that. $10
Roman, Dave (editor) – Life Meter #1
Life Meter #1 (by Various Artists including Dave Roman) Now Available! $6
I’m guessing that most people reading this are between 20 and 45, and if that’s the case most of you have played video games on a fairly regular basis at some point in your life. If you’re male you almost certainly grew up with them. Yes, that may be a sweeping generalization, I’m just speaking of all the male friends I have. This book is a collection of short pieces about video games, so that long winded intro was to tell those of you who have never played video games that you will be utterly lost reading this comic. It even dealt with any concerns I’ve had about anthologies, as all the pages are numbered, there’s a table of contents and it even lists the video games on which these pieces are based. Hey, I’m practically an expert on old video games and even I needed the occasional hint. Stories in here include a day in the life of Frogger (by Dan Abdo), Debbie Huey’s take on the obsession of Toad from the Mario games, Faith Erin Hicks has a continuing series about a horny fangirl who is hiding out from zombies, Dave Roman shows us what’s inside the Moto Bug (in one of those pieces that flew right over my head), Jamie Dee Galey shows us the dangers of shaking trees, Phil McAndrew has a piece on Pac-Man commiseration, and Lea Hernandez tells us all about Mickey’s ghetto booty from Kingdom Hearts II. There are also full page (or half page) comics about various assorted video games that’ll be better left as a surprise, but I have to mention the highlight of the comic: Jacob Chabot’s piece on Burger Time. I don’t think you even need to have played the game to love this strip, as we are treated to an origin story of the chef from Burger Time and shown that a man with a spatula and a salt shaker can, in fact, be a bad ass. If you don’t have some love in your heart for video games this comic probably won’t do a thing for you, but if you do it’s hard not to love it.
