Tommy Siegel

A musician tries drawing a webcomic a day for 500 days straight, but drags his mildly amusing cartoons down by inserting text pieces about how hard it is to draw a comic every day for 500 days straight. In heaven, Charles Schulz is sneering and flipping this guy the bird.

Tommy Siegel is a musician in the band Jukebox the Ghost (Me either). After messing around with several doodles, he was challenged to produce a new comic every day for 500 days. He posted them on social media, garnered a following, caught the attention of famous people, and landed a book deal. This book is the result.

It was a gift from my son, and I found it to be laugh out loud funny, certainly guffaw worthy.

As the title suggests, this is very much a satire of life here and now. There are show more contrasts ("Football vs. Football", "Star Wars vs. Star Trek", "Scrambled Eggs vs Cereal"), helpful guides ("Fall Fetish Checklist", "Stages of Coffee Addiction", "A Guide to Paper-free Hand Dryers", "What Your Sandals Say About You"), as well as political humor ("How Your Grandparents Act vs. How Your Grandparents Vote").

Interespersed among the comics, Siegel shares his experiences and opinions about the 500-day comic challenge and dealing with social media, Facebook in particular. It's fairly astute, as Siegel's experiences and conclusions have been corroborated by digital media analysts. Completed in mid-March of 2020, the worst of it came to fruition while the manuscript was being readied for production in October.

If you like humor that holds a mirror up to society and pokes fun, then it's for you. If you're easily offended, particularly if you're in denial about your coffee addiction or social media is your daily meth, then this book isn't for you.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because it made me laugh. show less

I've been seeking some comedy in my life lately, and this book was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Candy Hearts by Tommy Siegel is an absolutely hilarious sets of comics featuring conversation hearts that have their thoughts written on them. It's insanely funny and had me chuckling and smirking as I read it. The comics are brutally honest and real (like one heart talking about himself and the other guy half listening but instead thinking about what he's gonna say himself). I seriously loved show more it! It's hard to find a good comedy book that makes me enjoy it the entire time, but this was it!

I highly recommend this book. If you want something fun, easy to read and completely sassy and sarcastic, this book works. If you just want to read a few little pages at a time, do it. If you want to binge the whole thing, you can! This isn't a book that you need to be glued to, but it's well worth every penny.

Five out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review. show less

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free via Netgalley.com.

I was scrolling through the library of available humour books on Netgalley.com looking for something funny to read, and thus review.

The premise of the book: a personal challenge to create 500 cartoons in 500 days. The completed book displays many of these cartoons and discusses the challenges of modern media (AKA our addiction to social media), being in a band and other humourous and timely topics.

I really enjoyed the show more stories and the cartoons that were displayed. Many of them were funny and some were thought provoking. This is a little over 200 pages packed with 2020 relevant topics and cartoons. While it was a humour book, it was nice to know that other people have the same anxieties as I do.

My favourite page was titled "What your coffee preparation method says about you". #IHopeThisHelps show less