‘Good Comics for Bad People: An Extra Fabulous Collection’ HC (review)

Written and Illustrated by Zach M. Stafford
Introduction by Sarah Anderson
Published by Skybound/Image Comics

Old man rant time

The back cover of Good Comics for Bad People reads:

Master of the hilarious, unpredictable, and just plain weird, Zach M. Stafford has been publishing Extra Fabulous Comics for over 10 years. Good Comics for Bad People marks his graphic novel debut, and features all the laughter, absurdity, and bodily fluids for which the beloved webcomic is known.

Now doesn’t that make it seem hip and cool?

I guess I’m just not hip and cool anymore (was I ever?) because I don’t get it. Is it art? Well, yes, of course it is, and I’ll defend it on that score any day. But is it good art?

Extra Fabulous Comics is one of those amateurish-looking, sparsely drawn ultra-black comedy strips that have proliferated on the Web since the heady late ‘90s days of the super violent animated Happy Tree Friends. It’s darkly satirical, often self-satisfied, and even sometimes quite clever, but, to be honest, it’s overall depressing as all get out.

Taken in small doses, these types of strips elicit at least a bit of appreciation for their wordplay or visual use of the comic strip form. This book, however, with more than 200 pages of these mostly unpleasant, twisted panels and their obsession with sex and violence is just too much. I’m not offended. Not much offends me anymore. I’m just annoyed. Why would I want to subject myself to this much negativity? And what’s with the sideways eyebrows and the eyes so often not even being on the faces? Is that supposed to be a style? Perhaps if the artist was three-years-old.

To say the overall tone of the strips is absurd would be correct—so absurd that I don’t even get some of them!

But I know I’m not the intended audience. To be fair to Mr. Stafford, if he’s been doing this for a decade, he’s clearly found his audience and that’s great for him. If you want to sample it for yourself, you are, of course, free to do so, and your mileage may certainly vary from mine.

As for me, though, I can’t recommend Good Comics for Bad People to anyone. To me, it’s more like Bad Comics for Good People.

Old man rant over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Forces of Geek, in progress.