{"id":18486,"date":"2011-09-19T17:08:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=18486"},"modified":"2011-09-19T17:08:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T22:08:08","slug":"brookes-gareth-the-black-project-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=18486","title":{"rendered":"Brookes, Gareth &#8211; The Black Project #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.appallingnonsense.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Website<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18487\" title=\"blackproject11\" src=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject11-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject11-203x300.jpg 203w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject11-693x1024.jpg 693w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject11.jpg 1072w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Black Project #1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I never know what to expect with Gareth, and that is a wonderful thing. Between the Man Man books and some other assorted comics it was already made clear that he has a real knack for genuinely funny stuff. This one, on the other hand, takes another turn entirely. This is the story of a young boy and his obsessive quest to &#8220;create&#8221; a girl. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s ever spelled out how young the boy is. I&#8217;d guess somewhere around 12, as he&#8217;s still in school and rarely gets much time away from his parents. Anyway, he manages to assemble a monstrosity called Laura, but a friend notices an arm, a fight ensues, and the boy has to dismantle it in a hurry. That&#8217;s enough creepiness for one comic, but Gareth is just getting started. Our hero decides to make another girl, and this time he&#8217;s going to do it right. Naturally it isn&#8217;t going to be as easy as all that, and the boy is eventually found out, but I&#8217;m in danger of spilling too many beans here. I&#8217;ll just say that (according to the message at the end) this story is going to be continued, and I&#8217;m a big fan of the new direction. Well, maybe not if this is going to be 100% of his focus, as the world needs a new Man Man comic every year or so, but this book succeeded on just about every level. It&#8217;s set up with large chunks of text with illustrations filling in some gaps, but it&#8217;s not like a lot of text-heavy comics that seem to rely almost completely on the words. Those pictures are crucial and add to the horror of this &#8220;girl&#8221; that he&#8217;s constructing. Once or twice the words got a little too small (I&#8217;m guessing he had to shrink things down for the comic size), but that&#8217;s the only negative thing I have to say about this. If you have a hollow spot where your funny bone used to be, buy this for your first introduction to Gareth&#8217;s work. Or if you just like a good, unnerving as fuck comic. No price as always, but I&#8217;ll guess $5.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject12.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18488\" title=\"blackproject12\" src=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject12-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject12-203x300.jpg 203w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject12-695x1024.jpg 695w, https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/blackproject12.jpg 1067w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Website The Black Project #1 I never know what to expect with Gareth, and that is a wonderful thing. Between the Man Man books and some other assorted comics it was already made clear that he has a real knack for genuinely funny stuff. This one, on the other hand, takes another turn entirely. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2552,4639],"class_list":["post-18486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-gareth-brookes","tag-the-black-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18489,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486\/revisions\/18489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}