Book-A-Day 2014 #39: The Amazing Cynicalman, Vol. 2 by Matt Feazell

Matt Feazell has been telling the stories of Cynicalman and his compatriots -- Stupid Boy, Cute Girl, Spud & Ernie, Blinky the big dumb cat, Maw and Paw Headbanger, the Board of Superheroes, and various other odd characters -- for thirty-plus years now, since a much younger Feazell was inspired by the punk revolution to just make his own minicomics. And he hasn't stopped since -- there have been Cynicalman comics of one kind or another in each of the last five decades, from those occasional minicomics to a newspaper strip.

The newspaper strip seems to have been Cynicalman's most regular home for the past decade -- I saw the first collection of strips during my last stint of Book-A-Day, and now I'm here to tell you about The Amazing Cynicalman, Vol. 2. The first thing to understand is that it's not really that cynical: Feazell was always a fairly mild-mannered midwesterner, and his signature character is more confused and acted upon by life than a nasty misanthrope. Cynicalman is cynical because he lives in the real world

So this is an old-fashioned collection of gag-a-day strips, which originally appeared in such world-shaking publications as The Hamtramck Review and Flint Comix & Entertainment, and were then collected by their creator into a book, in the indie-comics DIY style. (And the best way to buy it, and the previous book, is still directly from the author.)

They're fun, they're funny, and Feazell's stick-figure style is vastly more expressive and flexible than you'd expect -- after all, he's been doing this for more than thirty years. You'd expect him to get pretty damn good at it, and he is.

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index