No, no, no!After my glowing smilies review of #8 last month, I clock in again this month with my £2.50 and what do I get?
A week's worth of diary from Tom and Lily's life: Tom shifts through his old art and throws stuff away (hey! I'd love some original art!); they move in to the new house, and Tom meets Cristy, Lily's youngest sister who is going to be their lodger/freeloader. A lot of fuss is made about coke with no apparent subtext. Tom freaks out when he witnesses two random deaths in the same week. There is more fussing about coca cola. The drain pipe clogs up and they call a plumber. Lily's book gets published and Tom reassures Lily for her insecurities, returning earlier favors when he was preparing his own book. The drain pipe is fixed.
See the connecting thread in the above? Yeah, me neither.
I appreciate this book and support it each month because each issue so far has had a central theme; even though it occasionally veered into 'what happened today' scenes, it always connected it back to the central focus of the story and the theme of the issue. This issue was nothing more than a dear diary, random entries hat jumped around erratically with no connecting theme or scene transitions. When the scene jumped from the coca-cola subplot (eek), to the first death of the week (brrr), I was left leafing through the book to see if there was a missing page misprinted in the back, connecting the two scenes. I'd have preferred to have seen the three separate plots/stories in this issue as three actually distinct stories, instead of an intermeshed mess. American Splendor is a good example of that format.
Then again, if I had the choice, I wouldn't have bought a book about binge pop drinking and clogged drains. I hope next issue springs back into shape and the title's usual excellence.
Grade: 3/10
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