Saturday Revue February 21: Random Things For Random Beings

Aaaaand now for something completely..... RANDOM!

Whether you need celestial guidance from a cat or underwater phone chats, a good laugh or the apocalypse,  Random Things For Random Beings has got you covered. 

The creation of Van Husk I, Random Things For Random Beings can be found here

A three way cross between a slice of life, an adventure and the Sunday Funnies, Random Things For Random Beings makes a niche all its own.

The piece loosely revolves around Sophie Fisher, bike messenger and queen of the color blue. Complementing her short-tempered snark is the stunned choir boy Christian and the lovable strongman Otto. Together, they make  a quirky, off the wall and oddly endearing dynamic that pulls the humor out of those awkward and odd moments in life.

The Rating

Not quite on the mark, but close!

The Raves

There's much to love about Random Things. For one thing, there's Sophie. 

Smart, cute and sassy, she's the most dynamic character in the crew. 

       The art style is reminiscent of Sunday Funnies classics like Foxtrot, Bound and Gagged, Argyle Sweater and Zits, and at moments it pulls off the same amusingly awkward poker-faced humor of Bound and Gagged or Rhymes With Orange. At its best, the art pulls off the clean tightness in art style, color play and line work of  The Far Side and Zits. The characters are wonderfully exaggerated and there's just the right balance of skill and simplification in the drawing style.

The humor is also reminiscent of the best pokerfaced comics, and I'd actually like to see more of a focus on that deadpan situational humor that shows through now and again; it's done cleverly and with a fresh take. The jokes make you blink for a moment and then burst out laughing.

The Razzes

Unfortunately, Random Things can't decide whether it's a longform story or a gag-a-day comic, and both story and artform suffer for it. As a reader, it's extremely jarring to be thrust constantly in and out of a storyline without warning. There is a nifty feature in the archive that lets you read either the story or the gags, but from the standpoint of a daily reader it'd be irritating to me. The constant change in subject left me feeling like I never really got into the material. Yes, it is called Random Things, but I'd actually like to see it become MORE random rather than trying and failing to do two types of comic at once. It doesn't gel, and it leaves the reader feeling a little alienated and bewildered.

The art as yet still has the tentative quality of an artist learning the craft; sometimes it's really great, and then there are the bad days when it's obvious that the creator had to use a scanner and needs to keep up the work perfecting their style. It's getting there though!

The Revue

Something fun to read in your pj's on Saturday morning.