Idle Hands by Paul R Cheshire

Idle Hands coverI hate Facebook. I hate the enthusiastic joy with which people tell you what they had for breakfast, as if you’re going to take a fanatical interest in their future bowel movements. I hate the surprise exclamations of joy when snow falls in January, as if these people  have spent every previous second of their existence trapped in windowless room. I hate people’s complete inability to understand the “like button” as they give a thumbs up to someone who’s just posted a status update that their entire family has been killed in  a freak spelunking accident. I hate the endless requests to join games I have zero interest in. Don’t you people get it? I stay in to avoid you all, to avoid being social and to be on my own.  I dont need you crawling out of my monitor and invading my private space. I’m trying to get Youporn to buffer for Christs sake and instead my bandwidth is just getting clogged with requests to be a goddamn Pirate Ninja Alien Twat!

So yeah, I hate Facebook. So when a comic book starts with a story called “Unlike” decrying the effect that Facebook has had on humanity then there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to like it.

Idle Hands is a 24 page humour anthonlogy from the brain of Paul Cheshire a writer from somewhere in internetland. Covering a wide range of themes with a wide range of colourful language, even though the art is in black and white,  Cheshire’s strips range between 1 & 5 pages. This is good as it means that if a particular strip isnt to your taste then something else will come along shortly that may appeal more. The art is simple, but the variety on display means it remains interesting & it serves the humour particularly well. To be blunt the humour in Idle Hands is childish in places and random to the point of obscurity in others. This is certainly not a book that will appeal to everyone’s tastes and will no doubt offend some people, with phraes like “I will glaze you like a fuck cake”. But then everyone is different because all of those reasons I have just listed were exactly why I liked it. You see despite having done my best impression of an adult for a few years now I still tend to snigger like a nine year old at words like “Boner”. This is because I am infantile and stupid and if you dont like it well nyah nyah nah nah nah.

Perhaps Idle Hands greatest strength is that it reminds me of a mispent youth reading Viz. Short funny strip humour either seems to be dying out these days or migrating to the internet, so when a comic comes along hearkening back to those days it’s hard not to feel a warm glow of nostalgia and at least this time round I dont have to put on a false mustache and try to pretend I’m an adult to the man in my local newsagents that’s known me since i was 3. Idle Hands isn’t a comic that will break boudaries or change the medium, its strips feel more like sequential jokes rather than deep and intense commentaries (though there are some interesting ideas that get touched on), but it does set out to make you laugh and succeeds at doing so for the most part. Given the utterly miserable times we live in if something can make you laugh even for a little while it must be worth a look. Just don’t expect to see me talking about it on Facebook.

You can buy Idle Hands here. Now go away I’m trying to watch Porn.