The Collected Prison Funnies

    (Legion of Evil, 2002)
™ and © Legion of Evil Press

The genesis of this comic book stems from an ill-conceived “prank” that creator Chip Zdarsky played on an ex-girlfriend: a “prank” that resulted in a month-long jail term for Zdarsky. Apparently, she didn’t get the joke. He must have learned from that experience, because he has turned his attempts at humor from practical jokes to comics. Except that the results are just as unfunny, and readers won’t get any more laughs than his ex did.

The first third of the comic book consists of reprints of his Prison Funnies comic strip that he originally created for his college newspaper. Zdarsky obviously believes his work is funny; he continually pats himself on the back through a series of added footnotes after each strip, telling the reader just how funny they’re supposed to be. Except they’re not.

Zdarsky chugs through the rest of the book, comforted by his own laughter while drowning out the unamused silence of the reading audience. For the record, the remainder of the comic consists of two short stories that are equally humorless but at least are thankfully free of his self-congratulatory commentary.

In all fairness, Zdarsky seems to be a decent artist; his caricatures look as if they could carry a joke, if only he could come up with one. If anything was accomplished at all with this book, it’s proving that a title like Prison Funnies really is an oxymoron.

— Jim Johnson
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