Book-A-Day 2014 #65: Menage a 3, Vol. 2 by Gisele Lagace & David Lumsdon

The first collection of this webcomic was Book-A-Day #29; I direct interested readers there for the backstory (and a digression on my then-ailment, the Creeping Crud. This week I've thrown out my back, but that doesn't effect blogging, so this is the first and only time I'll mention it.)

I don't have my usual links to that big online bookstore this time out; the Menage a 3 collections are available directly from the authors, free online in the way of webcomics, or not at all. (And if two options, one of which is "absolutely free with a bit of clicking," isn't good enough for you, then you are just unreasonable.)

The second collection finds the strip having introduced all of the main characters -- Gary, Zii, and Didi, the three roommates; Dillon and Matt, the sometime couple who used to be Gary's roommates; and Sandra, Didi's coworker who slept with Matt when drunk. (It's not quite the case that everyone in the cast is bisexual, but they're nearly all game and willing to try anything once -- and this is a sex comedy, and those work best the more sex and sexual tension they have. Menage a 3 may be the perfect sex comedy, actually, because of that: nearly any member of the cast can be a complication for nearly any other member, which makes for excellent door-slamming, in flagrante-discovering farce.)

So this book has five long sequences of strips, which are mostly headlong farce and always wickedly funny. Crammed into the middle is the introduction of a new character, Sonya, who absolutely isn't a lesbian but keeps getting seduced by Zii.

As usual, talking about humor is boring and dull: it can't compare with experiencing humor. So I'll avoid describing the plots in any detail. I also won't claim that Menage a 3 will be to everyone's tastes -- you do need to be pretty cosmopolitan and modern and sex-positive to enjoy it -- but it's quick and funny and sexy and silly, with a great set-piece near the end of this volume set at a mostly-drag performance of a stage play about DC Comics superheroes.

Look, check it out online, if you haven't before. That'll show you if Lagace's smooth Dan DeCarlo-esque lines and her and Lumsdon's flair for sexy silliness work for you. I hope it does; it would be a sad thing not to enjoy something as effervescent and full of life as this.

Book-A-Day 2014 Introduction and Index