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Have you heard of KeenSpot? It's a collection of
great free web comics. They also collect and
publish the comics they promote. You Damn Kid is
one of them and it's one of the funniest I've
read. I should give a big thank you to the Roberts
family as they bought the book at Wizard World and
gave it to me. I should also thank my dad's lousy
truck, as I spent 13 hours going from mechanic to
mechanic one day getting it tested, fixed and
tested again for an Emissions Test (an Ontario
Environmental thing). I took this book along to
help me pass the time and it did a wonderful job.
The strips go from laugh out loud funny to
peculiar funny. Despite being about a couple of
kids, some of strips venture into adult humor as
well. I suppose most of us can remember really
screwy adult stuff we got exposed to as kids. The
book is full of that and while the experiences are
different for everybody, the feeling behind it is
very easy to relate to. The book is a collection
of one page strips with 4 equal sized panels (two
on top, two on bottom). It's perfect for stopping
and starting again part way through.
The artwork is a bit stiff, but it serves it
purpose as the panels aren't meant to flow into
each other like a normal comic strip. Each panel
tells a part of the story and Owen does a great
job of it. I strongly suspect it's a harder than
it looks to do this type of cartooning. Owen is
taking a mix of both long and short stories and
making them all fit in a 4 panel story telling
format, and making it interesting or funny (or
both!). Owen deserves extra credit for doing
things differently and being successful with it.
I give this a 4 and a half stars out of 5.
Regards,
Jamie Coville
2004-10-25
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