I don’t usually buy collections of webcomics unless they come with some crazy awesome extras that I can’t get online. However I had to pick this one up when I saw Mr. Campbell at SPX this month. He even drew a little picture in it for me!

John Campbell’s ‘Pictures for Sad Children’ is a webcomic about people who hate other people. At first glance the art looks very simplistic. The figures consist of a rectangular body, circle head, stick arms, and two dots for a face. The book’s only colors are grey and white and there are nearly no backgrounds throughout the whole comic. I could easily see this turning some people off to the strip but it’s what immediately sucked me in. The art style is very reflective of the tone and message of the book. Life is bland, the world is bland, and everything sucks. With such simplistic art you’re able to focus completely on the writing, which is where the comic really shines. The strip begins with Paul, a man who died and now walks the Earth as a dead man wearing a sheet. No one is surprised, worried or even bats an eyelash at the fact that this dead guy is still ‘living.’ This is all covered in the beginning of the comic and gives you an immediate feel for what the rest of the story will be like. Paul keeps doing his job and keeps hating people until he decides to travel the world. His views on everything don’t change even after finally getting to visit Russia, Egypt and Paris, ‘Just another bullshit town.’ Paul Returns home and tries to get his old job back but can only land a lower position training temps to answer phones. Then we meet Gary, a young man with no real direction in life, who becomes the new main character. We follow Gary through life as he learns that nothing matters, we’re all just cogs in the machine, and life is short. Too short to get anything real done. Any other story would have Gary learn that life is worth living and people really are good deep down. Mr. Campbell does not want to tell that story.

Sounds like a downer, huh? Well it kind of is. With it’s mellow tone and ever deepening plot arcs the strip really pulls you in. Sitting down to read a couple pages of this you soon realize that you’ve blown through the entire archive and either feel driven to not be like the characters of this strip and do something or just kill yourself. I don’t think I’m selling this comic very well but I’m just telling it like it is. Pictures for Sad Children will bring you down and hard but the characters with their misanthropic social commentary really speak to me and other college/post college people who have no idea what to do next. It’s a story about life and life sucks.

8/10 – Downer but very satisfying read that makes you think about life, the universe and everything.

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