Crude Dude Comix #5
Important note: I have a fairly miserable cold today, my head feels like it’s going to float away and I mostly want to go back to bed. So if this review comes across as crankier than usual, it may or may not be justified. That’s what I get for pledging to keep up the daily reviews. I should also note that this issue came out in 2005 and my main complaints (the overwhelming amount of shading in the action scenes and the many spelling errors) seem to have been fixed, or at least that’s the impression I got from wandering around Jose’s website for a bit. Still, this review is about this particular issue, and it landed on the side of being a bit of a disappointment. Mostly because Jose set a high bar for himself initially (at least with me), as there aren’t nearly enough people doing political and/or current events in their comics. This mini has a pile of stories, starting with a meandering piece about the benefits of abandoning society and joining a group of people living in the wilderness. It did make a few good points. I would think one of the main points of leaving society would be to leave other people altogether, but I’m also an antisocial kind of guy. Next up is a short piece with a hippy arguing that we should respect all cultures, including the ones that practice genital mutilation. Said hippy goes on to practice what he preaches, but the story would have probably been stronger without the final page of generic hippy bashing. They’re an easy target, I know, but sometimes less is more. Cancer Everywhere is the funniest piece in the book, dealing with the fact that everything in the world supposedly causes cancer and the creative ways the people involved try to work their way around that fact. Still, I used a sample page from this story to illustrate my point about that art going shade crazy. Philanthropy Massacre also deals with fairly easy targets: the Hollywood elite and the criminal amount of money wasted on crappy movies when it could go to helping all sorts of people. A massacre is always fun and there are some insightful bits, so no complaints there. Finally there’s a piece about how everything is so shitty and how much shittier it’s going to get in ten years, and you’re certain to find something to agree with in this one. All told it’s a meh, mostly because of the dense shadowing whenever things got really interesting, the spelling errors (although he did get a lot of the big words right, so it’s not like the guy’s a moron), and his unfortunate habit of calling every stupid thing “gay”. I did like how he summed up the stories in the introduction, or at least what he was trying to accomplish with them. From his website it’s hard to tell if he’s still doing comics, but (yes, even with the “meh” review) I’d like to see where these stories went from here. No price, but it’s probably around $2.
