Shouldn’t You Be Working?

(Fantagraphics, 2003-2005)
™ and © Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Almost everybody occasionally doodles. Cartoonist Johnny Ryan (Angry Youth Comix) did it while working as an insurance clerk. His doodles are collected in this unusual volume.

There are a few gag panels and renderings of such established characters as Hagar and Dennis the Menace. Most of the collection, however, is made up of bizarre characters. Some of them are clever, but many are crass. Nude women, occasionally cute but often grotesque, share the page with scatologically fixated geeks. The volume exudes a prepubescent obsession with mammaries and excrement. Were this a story, the plot might be a mitigating factor. As a sketchbook, however, there is nothing present to offer redemption.

It starts out fun in a voyeuristic, reading-someone’s-diary sense, but that quickly wears thin. Ryan is clearly a competent and imaginative artist, but the overabundance of toilet humor and the dearth of real comedy will undermine the enjoyment value for many readers.

Ryan does draw nice robots, though.

— Jack Abramowitz

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