Rating: WARTY!
I came to this graphic novel via a movie called Ghost World, which I really enjoyed. Once I discovered it came from a graphic novel, I requested that and this one to follow up. I am sorry to report I was disappointed in both. This one appealed because it promised, in the blurb (and we all know how blurbs lie) to be a satire about the comic book industry. It failed. I should have guessed from the title that it was going to be a fail, but I'm always hopeful that my more cynical and pessimistic side will be disappointed. In this case it was not.
The blurb for this one claimed it was "A vicious satire of pop culture and the commerce of art," and claimed it was "a brutal and scathing peek into the insular, pathetic world of the comic book industry," and also that it goes about "mercilessly skewering the business and medium of comics, bouncing from art to commerce to culture high and low." Well, none of that applies.
It's actually a puerile male-centric view of life that has little or nothing to do with comics. The artwork was scratchy and ugly, and the overall look was far too busy to be pleasing to the eye. Often there was more text than art, which makes this in some parts more like an illustrated novel than a graphic one. The story wasn't funny or interesting and I quickly gave up reading it. I can't commend it.
