Derek Hunter is a F**k
I’ve gotten fairly jaded from all the auto-bio comics I’ve read over the years. It takes something genuinely awful or revealing for me to sit up and take notice, which isn’t to say that something falling short of that level can’t still be a great comic. Still, Derek apparently generally sticks to more conventional fare, but he decided after attending a few small cons to try his hand with “A collection of short stories that make me look bad”. Well, he did it. I should get a few disclaimers out of the way before I get started. “Derek Hunter is a F**k” hurts me to type, as I’m all for saying “fuck” whenever possible, but that’s how the man put it on the cover and that’s how I’ll put it here. He is also saved (barely) by the fact that all the incidents in this book happened when he was late high school/early college age, and there are allowances for being a fuck at that time in your life. Finally, the guy lives in Utah. I’ll concede that he probably had to be a fuck at that point just to survive. Still…yeesh. Stories in here include Derek’s foisting off a girl he likes on a friend (then making out with her while the three of them are laying down in the same bed (seriously)), a prank with curdled milk that I understand completely, breaking up with a girlfriend while he was fucking her, insulting a girl he was making out with a party and then his reaction upon seeing her later, and some more or less understandable pranks he played on some tremendously obnoxious college roommates. Hey, the final tally isn’t all that bad: two are inexcusable, two are pranks (but it might be a stretch to call them “harmless”) and one that falls somewhere in the middle. He seems like a nice enough guy now, as he’s married with a kid on the way (depending on when this came out), and he’s as honest as humanly possible with this stuff. He treats making this as a catharsis towards growing up, so more power to him. If you’re one of those people who need a jolt from the auto-bio world or want to see how one of these is done when the author is really willing to let it all hang out, this is required reading. $3
