Clyde the Redneck #1
There’s a comic strip in The Other Paper (based in Columbus Ohio), the name of which escapes me because I never bothered to read the ugly thing. Full disclosure here: it’s an uphill battle to get me to read newspaper comic strips, even though I have managed to find a few over the years that are pretty funny. Anyway, I could never be bothered with that particular strip because it was a clip-art thing: they would use the same panel for the whole strip, fill in the word balloons and (one assumes) wrap it up with a joke. That one, at the very least, had the decency to change the image every week. This is a collection of four panel strips, all told with clip-art, all using that profoundly ugly image from the cover. Stephen starts off thanking a bunch of conservative luminaries, but a quick glance at his website shows that he’s not really a fan of those nutbags. OK, so the comic looks terrible. What about the writing? It’s OK. It’s the same format for the whole thing of course: first panel with only a title, next two set up some sort of a punchline, and then the punchline is delivered. Topics include being followed too closely, waiting for McCain to get elected, seeing a lot of stickers on a car, falling in love with a country singer on the radio, yelling at an Obama bumper sticker, and how high schools dress slutty. As humor is subjective, I will only say that I thought it was significantly more stupid than funny. It looks like he has other, better (?) books available, so here’s hoping that I picked up one of those comics in my mad dash through SPACE, as I’d hate to think this lazy mess is the best this guy has to offer. $1
