Toonedelic Times #6

Posted: Tuesday, April 4, 2006
By: Steve Saville

Cover of Toonedelic Times #6 Creator(s): Darren Worrow
Publishers: Toonedelic (Self Published)
From: UK
Price: £2pds, 3E, $4 US

This is the tenth birthday issue of Toonedelic Times. Six issues over ten years that is hardly prolific but any self-published comic that lasts a decade deserves a healthy and sincere round of applause.
Well done guys, you are verging on an institution.

I was fairly critical of the predictable fare on offer in the previous edition and when I started reading this latest offering I had a sinking feeling that nothing happening here was going to change my mind. But then along came a wee gem of a comic called The Quest for the Lost Remote Control. The concept of a hopeless, chair-bound male getting frustrated at not being able to finds the remote is not exactly highly original but what makes this comic work is the delightful development of paranoia on the part of the main character and the tension this creates between him and his partner. The real beauty of this comic though is the final frame where the inept male tries to get out of the huge hole he has dug himself into. It is a classic and highly amusing moment.

About a third of this comic is a well deserved birthday celebration and we are treated to an edited highlights package from previous issues. This is interspersed with a reflective commentary and the two placed together presents us with a unique look at the life of a small press comic. It still is, as it always has been, a free flowing loose type of comic. The importance of just 'doing it' often outweighs any pretence of artistry. #x54;his is first and foremost about having fun. True the contents may not match everyone’s idea of fun but thn again Toonedelic Times. has no desire to please everyone. It is a comic for the drug culture and proud of it.

Again a combination of small font and poor reproduction does have an adverse on some pages. The most arresting artist on display here is Steve Smith, his characters often resemble deranged Bash Street Kids.

Overall I found the contents in this edition, whilst still varied, more satisfactory and a better read than those in issue #5. When the humour works here it is genuinely funny, the paragraph describing Paddington Bear as the first 'hoody' being a case in point. Having said that we still have a healthy dose of the weird and the rude, the disturbed and the disturbing. Typical fare from the folks at Toonedelic Times. in other words.

In a Word: Homegrown.



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