Seething With Hatred #1
Now that is one fantastic title. This comic shows the dealings that Jim (just guessing because he’s the writer) has with the various people who rent apartments from him and/or complain about those apartments. He’s a leasing agent, meaning that he interviews people who are trying to get an apartment and takes complaints from people as they pay their rent bills. Everybody in the office hates each other to varying degrees, and Jim sees the dregs of humanity on a daily basis, which is bound to get somebody, well, exactly what the title up there implies. The first story shows the kind of complaints he gets and details his routine, including the part where his methods of escapism end up with the effect of essentially taking away all his free time and depositing him back at work on Monday. Next up is a story about a couple of kids just out of high school who clearly weren’t ready for a place of their own, but they had the paperwork in order and had stellar credit so they were granted an apartment. Parties and drunken orgies occur, and when they finally have to evict them nobody is even remotely prepared for what they find in the apartment, not to mention all the other illegal activities this scrutiny brings to light from other residents. Finally Jim gets dragged into a Homeland Security (!) sting, in which he has to ignore a man tied up in a trunk but ends up with some nice clout around the property. The story of the life of a leasing agent could theoretically be boring, I suppose, but this one has more than enough fascinating stories to make it worth a look. Dan Strauss also does an excellent job of making these people seem at least mildly human when he could have easily turned them all into caricatures. There’s some genuine humanity on these faces, and that back cover illustration showing a busy day at the pool is hysterical. Seethe on, gentlemen, I’m curious to see how many more of these terrible stories you have in you. $5
