Hill, Jonathan – Headache

April 23, 2010

Website

Headache

What a great comic. It seems like the “collection of short stories” style of comic is getting harder to find these days, or maybe I’m just getting a bunch of single theme comics these days. Whatever the case, this is a bunch of short, mostly autobiographical pieces from a guy who’s currently in school studying sequential art, so any hint of the amateurism (misspellings, bad grammar, sloppy art) that creeps into so many minis is missing here. The comic starts with an incredibly disturbing story about a walk in the woods, and my only piece of advice about that is maybe it should have been at the back of the book, but apparently that’s the mood Jonathon wanted to start the comic off with. Then you have a story about making a mix tape, which might seem like the kind of thing that’s been in almost every mini, and it’s sure been in a lot of them, but the ending makes it all worthwhile. Then there’s a story about a one night stand and all of the fallout, which is interesting if a bit self-indulgent, but hey, it autobio, right? Kind of silly to dock points for being a bit self-indulgent. Next up are a couple of shorts about a ring and a headache, respectively, with one telling the story mostlty in text and the other being a silent piece about an exploding head. Sort of. Last is a story about a man in jail and his lover on the outside, inspired by a Pixies song, and the fact that I can’t think of which song it’s been inspired by (even though I remember some of the lines) is driving me nuts. Good stuff all around, I don’t know what Jonathon is going to do with that degree in sequential art, when he gets it, but the classes are doing tons to solidify his grasp of the basics (unless he was a genius when he started or something), so here’s hoping he stays in school! Here’s an e-mail address and a website, this is $3.