Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Emily the Strange volume 1: Chairman of the Bored written by Reger, Brooks, & Gruner illustrated by Parker ::
by William the Bloody
You may not have read the comic, but I'm sure you know Emily. She's that corporate logo-type image created to sell stuff: everything from buttons to bumper stickers to t-shirts, they'd slap Emily's face on it and put some sort of punchy tag line underneath like, "I don't like you," or something equally charming. Because of this, I'm fairly certain that Emily was created to keep Hot Topic in business. So, we have this logo design of Emily who apparently sells pretty well, so naturally, someone decided to give her a comic book.
The subject matter of said book is a compilation of little two to six page stories which range from Emily coming up with thirteen uses for wire hangers to her own version of Cinderella (artfully entitled "SIN-derella". see what they did there? Clever bastards...). The art is usually black & white/greyscale with the odd spot colour thrown on, usually red (a la the Emily merchandise).
The Good: All of the renditions of Emily are, or course, instantly recognizable. I don't know if they got the same commercial artist who came up with the original Emily designs to draw the book, but if not, he does a great facsimile. There's a story in which Emily uses music to make things a little less boring and the Beatles and Miles Davis are mentioned, so kudos on that. There is an actual comic book "interview" the band The Damned, and that's pretty darn keen of its own right.
The Bad: Just about everything else. When will they learn? You can't first produce an icon and THEN try to make a comic/television show around it and try to live up to what the fans of the merch expect. It's simply impossible, and here is no exception. The people who put this together (did you notice there were THREE writers? I couldn't BELIEVE it took three people to write the stuff in here...) were obviously trying way to hard to appear "cool" and missed the mark miserably much like ones mother when they go and say something like "rad!" Most of the book is about Emily being bored with everything, which is waaay too much if you ask me (even though there were in fact three authors, it seems they couldn't be more original...). I'm not even sure who this book is supposed to appeal to. If it's meant to attract the sort of people who were already collecting Emily merchandise, which I'm guessing are 13 to 15 year old girls, then they are far off base because THEY aren't going to know who the Damned and Miles Davis are and will most likely be grossed out by stories like "Strange Sauce." And I'm using the term "story" very loosely here as more often than not there is hardly any dialogue at all, and when there is, it's something like "I'm so bored to death today, I'm even bored OF death!" Please. The overall artwork is also extremely terrible. Other than the renditions of Emily herself, which are quite clean, the rest of the art is a sloppy mess. Quite a turn off.
Overall, this comic was horrible. It was trying way to hard to appeal to an "audience" and as a result, squarely appeals to no one. The writing and art are both appallingly awful. Seriously, I could tap on the shoulder of any angst ridden 15 year old and ask them to draw me what they thought would be a "cool" comic and get something of a higher quality. It seems like the whole point of this comic is not merely to sell the book, but to also brainwash its readers into purchasing Emily merchandise and joining the Emily fan club, which is downright shameful. Everything in this book was all too cliché with no redeeming qualities (except for the part with The Damned, which is what saved it from a dismal death, namely being doused with kerosene and lit on fire in the driveway).
F ! ! !
