I recently read two comic books that were both funny and have strange in the title, hence this post! While I didn’t feel I could write long enough blog posts about these webcomics individually, combined I could.

Strange Planet by Nathan W Pyle

I adored this comic book! This comic, most commonly viewed on Instagram, has blue aliens going about their lives in a human-like manner. The humor lies in the way they describe what they are doing, and you realize the absurdness of many of our rituals. After you read just a few of Pyle’s strips you will start to think about how you could describe what you are doing in a sly manner. Divided into sections- young beings, friendship, adulthood and recreation; these four-paneled strips have an appealing blue, purple and pink color palette. My favorites included having a cat as a pet, parenthood (the lies we tell our children about Santa and the tooth fairy!), star damage, eating honey and wearing ties. The author’s off-beat perspective on our everyday life made for a clever book, and can be enjoyed daily by following his online work.

 

Comics for a Strange World by Reza Farazmand

This collected book of comic strips from the Poorly Drawn Lines website was the December pick for the I Read Comics Books bookclub on Goodreads. It was amusing, with minimalist drawings with typically four to five panels. However, the simple drawings don’t necessarily mean simple ideas, as many of the strips were very clever with sly humor. Two animals showed up over and over again, a large green bear and a bluebird that looked suspiciously like the Pigeon from Mo Willem’s children’s books, that were funnier than if a human character said the same thing. My favorite strips were the baby that plagiarized, the shapes club, asteroid plans, planets talking about life (“it’s when a bunch of tiny organisms do sex on you”) and the longer astronauts in a cave story.

Nathan Pyle and Reza Farazmand now join Sarah Andersen’s Sarah’s Scribbles and Nick Seluk’s Heart and Brain comics that I follow on Twitter and Instagram for their insightful jokes. These two author and illustrators offer some strange and wonderful comics!

-Nancy