Beauty Patrol

By Cody Roder

I recently read something online somewhere (on the Comics Reporter maybe?) that talked about graduates from the Center for Cartoon Studies. The person (whoever they were) wrote about how the center was turning out comics graduates who may know something about putting together a comic, but are still just making minicomics and webcomics with the hope that something will catch on and they'll have a career.

This comic really reminded me of that idea, because while this comic may have a pretty cool cover, the interior is generally confusing and not particularly coherent. At least part of this is because the comic contained within is at least partially a "daily diary comic" (or at least that's what it says on the final page), but I never would have guessed that.

Instead we have characters who wander around doing not much, and spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing various philoso-physics concepts. There is definitely a place in comics for discussions about entropy, particles, time and space, and similar things, but I don't think its place is in comics that use nine panel grids where the art barely changes between panels, and the dialogue is disjointed and sentences are strung out across pages.

I think ultimately I just don't understand why this comic was printed. Not why it was made, because making any sort of art can help you get to grips with your thoughts and you have to work on your art to get better. But I just don't really know who the audience for a comic like this is.