Stanton, James – Gnarlton Livingston

January 26, 2012

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Gnarlton Livingston

Do you like pot? Do you like comic stories about pot? How about comic adaptations of a song that’s about pot? In that case, this comic will be right up your alley. As for the rest of us, you probably won’t find a whole lot to like here. This is an adaptation of a Carlton Livingston song called “100 Weight of Collie Weed,” which is about a guy trying to evade cops while carrying around, um, 100 pounds of weed. This comic kind of encapsulates my problem with comics/music/shows that are all about weed: OK, we’ve established that you really, really like weed. Now what? James has a pot leaf on most of his comics and his dinosaur series was all about dinosaurs that smoked a lot of pot, so we can kind of see where he’s coming from. But hey, at least that series had a lot going for it outside of that (and I should mention that he’s putting out a collected edition of that series soon with an entirely new “fifth issue” included), while this is a straight up adaptation of a song, which has never been my favorite kind of comic in any circumstance. Throw in the fact that I don’t generally care for reggae music and I’m not left with a whole lot. As for the rest of you, who knows? If you’re in your early 20’s and just discovering pot then you’ll probably love this, and his art is always nice enough to look at, but there’s not a whole lot to recommend this for the rest of us. I should also add that there’s a fold out cover (comprised of what is essentially four comic pages) for the song by Carlton Livingston, so if you do love the song then you can get a very nice poster about it for buying this comic. #5