Nugget #2
What a spectacularly unnerving comic. I mean that in the best possible way, of course! Otherwise I’d be curled up in a ball in a corner, too traumatized to even write a review. Apparently I missed making this comparison the first time around, but his work does remind me a little of Jim Woodring’s Frank. Outwardly cute protagonist, silently wandering around a world that’s trying to kill him in all sorts of creative and disturbing ways. Still, that’s where the similarity ends, and it’s possible that Tony never read Jim’s comics. Anyway! This is another collection of a few short pieces, and I’m not going to try quite as hard to avoid spoilers this time around, so look out! First up is Dogs, about our hero (I’m just going to assume his name is Nugget) narrowly avoiding being eaten by a monster at sea. He heads home for a peaceful nights sleep, which may or may not be what he ends up getting. Next up is Cake, which is too horrific for me to talk about. I’m still getting chills when I think about that one. Mother is up next, which is only marginally less disturbing, and even then it’s an obvious matter of opinion. Nugget does end up meeting his mother, or maybe he does. But, like everything else that happens to him in an average day, he’d probably have been better off never leaving the house. Finally there’s Bubbles, which is the sample image I used below. Balls of goo dropping from the sky interrupt Nugget’s card game, and they have a profoundly negative effect on his friend. He and his other friend make a run for it, but how do you fight black goo balls falling from the sky? If anybody is looking for a quote to sum up my thoughts, how about “adorably nightmarish”? That seems to be the long and short of it, which is one of those phrases I’ve never fully understood, but I’m still sticking with it. Once again I should point out his spectacular cover, and once again I hope that convinced some people seeing it at comic shops. Check it out, unless you demand happy endings in your comics.
