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ocurtsinger's review against another edition
5.0
Stunning! A humorous and philosophical exploration of human perception, media, and the inertia of everyday life. Quite possibly the strangest and yet most satisfying graphic novel I've ever read. I can't wait for the next Hot New Thing©!
jake_powell's review against another edition
3.0
Poetic and cerebral, but a bit too nihilistic for me
deepfreezebatman's review against another edition
2.0
wtf?? usually I like weird experimental comics, but I guess this was just too strange for me.
crookedtreehouse's review against another edition
2.0
If you're looking for humorous, not funny but humorous(?), slice of life comics that are drawn expertly but don't really engage your brain or your heart, this might be perfect for you. A guy gets bit by a bug, and kills that type of bug later, a person doesn't like an apple so he throws it to a squirrel, a pigeon gets diarrhea from french fries and ultimately gets run over by a car, a guy saves a bug from his house and later a cat kills it. Those are a good chunk of the stories in the book. If the synopses appeal to you, you should 100% grab this book because the art is great. But, for me, I found no reason why I would ever go back and reread these.
I recommend it for people who wish New Yorker cartoons were longer.
I recommend it for people who wish New Yorker cartoons were longer.
bluenicorn's review against another edition
2.0
I like his style, but I'm just not super into his work.
thecommonswings's review against another edition
5.0
This feels like revisiting an old friend. When I first started becoming interested in mini comics - about the time a copy of Jeffrey Brown’s Clumsy fell on my head in Nottingham’s Forbidden Planet in about January 2004 - Huizenga’s comics were always the ones that felt most fascinating to me. I ordered bunches of his stuff from his distribution page USS Catastrophe, from Supermonster and beyond, and because we’re roughly the same age I found the development of his ideas and his art kind of especially fascinating.
Huizenga’s genius is to combine something of the philosophical and allegorical themes of someone like Anders Nilsen but with his everyman hero, Glen Ganges, sort of placing the wilder and stranger threads in a more realistic context along the lines of that zen genius of comic art, John Porcellino and his King Cat books. Another genius from my days as a USS Catastrophe punter was Warren Craghead who treads a similar path, but who manages to boil down these ideas to their very essential basics. They fascinate me because they are so unlike anything I could ever do or articulate, but have a strange hold over me that I find really powerful and moving.
I’m not sure this is a book you can really understand until you have read it carefully, several times over. There are themes and messages broken up like a sort of mosaic, which the reader then has to contextualise and manoeuvre through. It’s playful, it’s surreal, it’s gorgeously drawn - taking Porcellino’s simple abstractions via Herge - and feels like a mystery you unpeel on each reading. Some of Huizenga’s mini comics are thrillingly experimental with the format, and because this is a book it doesn’t quite have that side of his art, but it also manages to incorporate red herrings and found art and... so much more
I feel like I’m being breathlessly enthusiastic and not wildly coherent, but it’s lovely to suddenly be plunged back to the thrill of sixteen odd years ago (which is terrifying) and getting another package in the post. I would never have believed that I would end up making comics myself, but this book feels like a Proustian Madeleine of sorts that takes me back to the before times. It’s wonderful
Huizenga’s genius is to combine something of the philosophical and allegorical themes of someone like Anders Nilsen but with his everyman hero, Glen Ganges, sort of placing the wilder and stranger threads in a more realistic context along the lines of that zen genius of comic art, John Porcellino and his King Cat books. Another genius from my days as a USS Catastrophe punter was Warren Craghead who treads a similar path, but who manages to boil down these ideas to their very essential basics. They fascinate me because they are so unlike anything I could ever do or articulate, but have a strange hold over me that I find really powerful and moving.
I’m not sure this is a book you can really understand until you have read it carefully, several times over. There are themes and messages broken up like a sort of mosaic, which the reader then has to contextualise and manoeuvre through. It’s playful, it’s surreal, it’s gorgeously drawn - taking Porcellino’s simple abstractions via Herge - and feels like a mystery you unpeel on each reading. Some of Huizenga’s mini comics are thrillingly experimental with the format, and because this is a book it doesn’t quite have that side of his art, but it also manages to incorporate red herrings and found art and... so much more
I feel like I’m being breathlessly enthusiastic and not wildly coherent, but it’s lovely to suddenly be plunged back to the thrill of sixteen odd years ago (which is terrifying) and getting another package in the post. I would never have believed that I would end up making comics myself, but this book feels like a Proustian Madeleine of sorts that takes me back to the before times. It’s wonderful
rach's review against another edition
2.0
There were a few moments I chuckled, but for the most part, I just didn't get it. Maybe I'm not intellectual enough to appreciate it, or maybe I just get bored too easily. Regardless, my favorite thing about this one was it was short.
levitybooks's review against another edition
1.0
I picked this up knowing nothing about it.
I read it once, slept and reread it after reflection after waking. I read some reviews, and then I read it again.
I realised that despite the fairly nice artwork and pacing between the panels it conveys absolutely nothing worthwhile. I often laugh aloud a lot when reading to overly dark or genuine stuff, but I read this in silence. The sense of humour was off, the jokes were bad. I can try explain. As in, the only truly comical thing about this is its incoherence, but that as a device only works if it's not continuous and therefore expected. If there was something truly sincere, meaningful or emotional in the middle of this I might have laughed, because without that (for the same reason), this is not absurd at all but just nonsense. Or maybe it was just the delivery... I thrive in absurdist humour and found books like Breakfast Of Champions non-stop hilarious and that was similarly wacky.
I wondered whether this is an example of something which people who are self-conscious about their 'intelligence' or 'edginess' say is good or cool as a joke to see whether other people agree. I'm feeling confident enough not to venture with the 'maybe I'm not the intended audience or smart enough' card.
The fact that this was made hardback makes me seriously consider the motive for people to buy a hardback book... can one really judge anything about a book by its cover?
Though I library loaned this, today, in the back of my mind, I will be thinking of more unsatisfying ways of spending $20.
I read it once, slept and reread it after reflection after waking. I read some reviews, and then I read it again.
I realised that despite the fairly nice artwork and pacing between the panels it conveys absolutely nothing worthwhile. I often laugh aloud a lot when reading to overly dark or genuine stuff, but I read this in silence. The sense of humour was off, the jokes were bad. I can try explain. As in, the only truly comical thing about this is its incoherence, but that as a device only works if it's not continuous and therefore expected. If there was something truly sincere, meaningful or emotional in the middle of this I might have laughed, because without that (for the same reason), this is not absurd at all but just nonsense. Or maybe it was just the delivery... I thrive in absurdist humour and found books like Breakfast Of Champions non-stop hilarious and that was similarly wacky.
I wondered whether this is an example of something which people who are self-conscious about their 'intelligence' or 'edginess' say is good or cool as a joke to see whether other people agree. I'm feeling confident enough not to venture with the 'maybe I'm not the intended audience or smart enough' card.
The fact that this was made hardback makes me seriously consider the motive for people to buy a hardback book... can one really judge anything about a book by its cover?
Though I library loaned this, today, in the back of my mind, I will be thinking of more unsatisfying ways of spending $20.
glitterandtwang's review against another edition
4.0
Unrelated vignettes, for the most part. Often found myself thinking that a few of the comics were good stand-ins for an episode of Welcome to Night Vale. Huizenga's a talented artist, equally good at creating cute animals, intricate details, and managing to unsettle the hell out of someone with just a few panels. I'm not as wild about Glenn Ganges as his other stuff, but there's plenty of both here.
daneekasghost's review
Not sure I can give this a starred rating. I read it twice through in one sitting. It made me chuckle at various points. I have no idea what it's trying to say. Commercialism, nature, death were the obvious themes.
There is no narrative, which isn't so much a problem, but there's not really any connective tissue that holds the whole thing together. Still, I'm certainly intrigued by it, and I'm sure it will continue to insert itself into my thoughts now and again in the next few weeks. Not sure who I would recommend this to, but I'm sure there are people out there who would love to read it.
There is no narrative, which isn't so much a problem, but there's not really any connective tissue that holds the whole thing together. Still, I'm certainly intrigued by it, and I'm sure it will continue to insert itself into my thoughts now and again in the next few weeks. Not sure who I would recommend this to, but I'm sure there are people out there who would love to read it.
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