Ben Zaehringer has been doing the webcomic Berkeley Mews for a few years now: I can't find any specific dates, but let's say close to a decade at the low end. (I think the strip is named after the Kinks song rather than the London street directly, but either one would be pretty random.)
There have been two collections of the strip: Sorry I Ruined Your Childhood was first, in 2019. Two years later, Zaehringer compiled How Not to Get into Heaven, and Andrews McMeel published it.
Like the first book, it's a collection of the strip, which is almost entirely one-offs - there is a stretch of five strips at the end about S.A.N.T.A., which I will not spoil. It's is very slightly shorter than the first book, with 121 strips - my guess, since the strips are not dated, is that it's a weekly, and so that's a bit more than two years.
Zaehringer draws rounded, cartoony bald people - usually purple-colored - who are sarcastic and counterproductive and get caught up in the usual cartoony silly versions of almost-normal situations. As the title implies, there's a decent number about heaven, though Berkeley is not quite as death-focused as some of Zaehringer's webcomics contemporaries.
Now, I'm not saying there's no death: this is a modern webcomic, so it's mildly dark and moderately twisted at its most family-friendly, but Zaheringer leans more into wordplay and funny ideas than the pure funny nihilism of some other strips. Berkeley is a strip you could show your grandmother, if she was particularly hip.
From the website, I think the strip is still running, and it's been another two years, so I have hopes of a third collection sometime soon. Funny stuff is good to have around, and Berkeley Mews is funny, so I hope it continues and flourishes.
No comments:
Post a Comment