Craig, David – Brick Breaks Free

Website

Brick Breaks Free

I can’t believe that I almost missed reviewing a Brick book. In case you were wondering, yes, it is indeed possible for a reviewer to clean their kitchen, put comics into a drawer to “sort through later,” and then completely forget to do that last step. For several years, since this is listed as 2019. Oh well, you get what you pay for! This is listed on his website as completing the “first season” of strips, and while I don’t know what that means, this is a solid collection of stories. Maybe the most practical uses for Brick that I’ve seen yet? If you’re new to Brick, the basic format is a sentient brick (or bricks) either getting into mischief or helping out in some way, usually in wordless fashion. I’m still waiting for the format to get old and I’m happy to report that it hasn’t happened yet. Stories in this one deal with Brick taking full advantage of the wind whistling through his holes, figuring out an ingenious way to entertain a child, being extremely useful as a golf caddy, fishing (his technique is unstoppable), enjoying a day on the beach both above and below the sea, what happens to a brick on a trampoline, going bowling (with a second page that’s terrifying in its implications for the other seemingly inanimate objects in this world), kinda sorta cheating at a carnival game, and meeting hundreds of tiny white bricks. There’s also a few pages of single panel strips of bricks helping people out, but there’s no way I could leave out the opus of the book, the story where the title comes from. Brick is helping out on a construction site, but that can be dangerous for a creature/item (?) who looks like construction material, and the worst happens to our hero: he’s cemented into a house. How does our hero escape? Well, that’s for you to figure out, but I think that cover might give you some idea. You know, if Brick had thought bubbles, that would have been a horrifying story. Just something to consider in this collection of otherwise lighthearted fun. I didn’t see any comics on David’s website that have come out over the last few years, but here’s hoping he’s still working on them. Either way, he still has copies of this sucker, so why don’t you get one for yourself? $10