My copy of Drew ‘s Toothpaste for Dinner book arrived on Monday, among other packages addressed to birthday boy Galen. Hooray! Some things:
- I laughed when I saw the signature. Drew was signing thousands of copies in the first couple of weeks, and it kinda shows. I liked the minimal scrawl.
- The proper binding and commercial design of the book freaked me out a little bit. On the one hand, I was happy that one of my preferred web comic guys had a great looking book out. Good for him! On the other hand, the main reason I like Toothpaste for Dinner is that it is so spotty: a lot of the funniest comics are working the “so unfunny it goes around the corner to funny again” factor (i.e.). I hadn’t realized until now how suitable the “so ugly it goes around the corner back to awesome” design of the website was. Reading endearingly patchy comics from a shiny book is disconcerting. It’s like… did the publisher know this was awesomely crappy, or did they just think it was what the kids call awesome these days?