Hard Times #8
There seems to be an endless assortment of ways to make fun of modern office life. If you work in an office, these ways are either a helpful way to blow off steam or an unwelcome reminder of where you're going to be stuck for the next 40+ years of your life. Or maybe you're lucky enough to not work in an office at all and these representations of office life are a bit like looking through the glass at various zoo animals. Either way it's an easy concept to screw up, but Ed seems to have a decent handle on the theme. This is the story of Jay, the (unmentioned) giant talking cat of the office. There were 7 issues before this one, but it's no trouble picking up on the action, as the first 7 issues were either about different things or the office life described here is so constant that we don't even need a recap. Jay is working his way up through the ranks, although he's doing it without a raise and by working much longer hours. He's also dealing with a boss who's happy to fire everybody around him for any reason he can think of, coffee that tastes like washed feet, an overzealous security guard and the fact that Sunshine Coffee is putting up new stores everywhere. You know, flipping through this again it just occurred to me that this was probably done on either a daily or weekly basis, as every page seems to end with a joke. The art seems to have unerased pencil lines all over the place, and if that's a mistake it's something that grew on me by the end of the issue. It seemed to somehow flesh out the characters more, as without the smudges and shading this whole thing would look fairly flat. I have one more issue here to help me make a final verdict, but based on one issue I'd say this is worth a look, although possibly best to stay away from if you prefer to think that offices don't actually exist. No price, so… $1?
Hard Times #9
Regular readers of this site probably already figured out that I occasionally wander all over the map from review to review. For example, if you look up at the review for the last issue, I said that all the unerased pencil lines grew on me after awhile, that they fleshed out the characters. This time around, it gets on my nerves in a big way. It just looks like crap way too much of the time, and while an argument could be made for leaving some of the lines on the characters, when you're forgetting to erase the pencil lines under whole blocks of text, it makes the comic almost impossible to read. So how about the content? It's the same format, except this time it's an over the hill superhero trying to make an honest living. He gets his first paycheck (and considers real estate fraud), tries life as a telemarketer, gives up and gets drunk, considers becoming a super villain, and eventually starts up an internet business and makes a few book. These are all four panel strips, mostly with some form of a punchline at the end. Some are funny, some not so much, but they're all at least decent. Sadly, none of it matters as those pencil lines just wore me down over the course of the book. I've said it many times over the years, but it's such an easy thing to fix that it just gets on my nerves. Still no price, so I'll go with $1 again, and you might like it just fine if you're a little less annoyed about this sort of thing than I am…
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