Beg the Question (A Minimum Wage Collection)

This book sounds, looks, smells true, but it's also very funny and poignant. This is not Yet Another Tale of Saddos a la Daniel Clowes, and it's not as crazy as your usual Charles Burns' follower. It's a very Gen-X tale of people struggling to live their own unique life as everyday new-yorkers, and it's sad and funny and crazy as real life is. If you want to "do an indie book" because you're into Clowes, then you should read this first and understand that the bar is much, much higher.

This covers a year in the life of a group of comic loving, punk rock clothes wearing friends living in Brooklyn. Will our protagonist ever find better graphic work than cranking out cartoons for pornographic magazines? The story is interesting and so is the illustration. Fingerman does a great job with panel layout and his figures have just the right amount of detail, from too tight or too wrinkly clothes to incredibly expressive faces.

I can't say I enjoyed this book. I hate to be shallow but one huge turn off for me is that his work is aesthetically unappealing to me. Fingerman has some talent and yet his drawing are sooooo ugly. I couldn't stand it. It's not that I only like to look on "beautiful" people, but I found Fingerman's drawings grotesque. Case in point: Rob Hoffman's eyebrows look like Vienna sausages, and you can't tell if the characters are sweating or have pustules on their skin. As far as the storylines go, I guess I didn't find it terribly interesting. Realistic, yes. Interesting, not really. I think there is a lot of potential there--as individuals all the characters are interesting, but their experiences together weren't particularly engaging. show more Overall, I'd say the book is nothing special. show less

It contains references to nyc I recognize as Creedmoor, Mt. Golda Cemetery, Moma, Lydia Lunch, the Subway and more