16 May 2009

Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Optical Sloth



Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction
Generally speaking I’m against throwing your own name in your comic title, but if you’re going to go all the way like Shannon did and also picture yourself bursting through the cover, I say more power to the man. This is a collection of odds and ends, so naturally some pieces are going to better than others. Things start off slow with a baffling story of a man who runs into an all-powerful Jimmy Hendrix and gets taken to heaven with a bunch of naked ladies who preach nothing but love. Oddly, the guy can’t wait to get out of there, but seems to have gotten something from the whole experience. Then there a few one page autobio pieces, at least a couple of which I’ve already seen in his other minis, but the piece sampled below was new to me and nicely reflects the struggle to ever find a copy of The Comic’s Journal. The heart of the book is up next, and 24 hour comics folk take note: Shannon has blasted you all out of the water. He decided to do a one page comic every hour of Super Bowl Sunday, starting at 8am and ending around midnight. It’s especially impressive because the guy is a Steeler’s fan and he still took time out of the day to make a comic. Granted, the art is about as simple as you can get, and I got a lot more out of reading this hourly strip that I just about ever have by reading most daily diary comics. The hourly format really gave him time to dig into the small details. There’s waking up, dealing with a nagging headache, cleaning up cat puke, picking up toys for his kids, making unhealthy food for the big day, playing with toys with his kids, and finally watching the game. If that sounds like too much detail for you, you’re clearly not a fan of autobio. You can’t get much more “day in the life” than this. Finally there’s a pile of sketches in the back of the comic, mostly stuff he’s sent to people who’ve mailed in over the years. I particularly enjoyed Ant Man fighting an ant over a twinkie, but maybe Wonder Woman using her lasso the make the Invisible confess her true love would be more your thing. It’s a pretty nice pile of comic any way you look at it, and well worth checking out. It’s $4, and if that’s too rich for your blood at the moment there are always all the cheap, cheap minis listed below this to convince you. $4

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