Elm City Jams #2 by Isaac Cates, Mike Wenthe and Various artists

First, let me clarify that list of “various artists”: Linnea Duvall, Tom Hart, Bill Kartalopoulos, Jon Lewis, Tom O’Donnell, and Jeff Seymour. As always with these jam books, it’s all about trying new things and still making funny, interesting stories. These could easily devolve into academic exercises and it would be hard to fault anybody involved, but I laughed out loud more than a few times while reading this, and that generally doesn’t happen for “academic” books. The rules for this one are simple and wonderful. An artist can take a title (that they didn’t make up) and get to work, passing onto somebody else after a panel or two. The rejected titles are hilarious (my favorite being Meat: The Parents), so obviously the ones they did use are even better. The other method is a bit more complex, involving joining individual panels and filling in the blanks to make a coherent story. So how did they do? I don’t want to spoil a damned thing here, which I suppose is part of my “job” as a “reviewer”. So, while keeping it as mysterious as possible, some of the concepts here include making a deal with the devil, Bert and Ernie running Halliburton, the devil’s avocado, space as a mindfuck, robots in trees, a rapping chicken and knight, drowning in a submarine, and a cursed comic. So, to wrap up, what you have here is some of the best names in comics doing various experimental works that all somehow end up funny. What’s not to love?