The strip would never pass muster with the editor of even the most liberal of publications. Why not? Because it asks its audience to laugh at stuff they know they're not supposed to find amusing. A half dozen complaints would get it canned in less than two weeks. In the course of the past few weeks alone, topics have included the pope, gay midgets, alcoholic infants, the aforementioned roasting of said comic creator, and of course the Terri Schiavo controversy. The strip no doubt offends plenty of first-time visitors, but I'm sure lots more get enough of a selfish chuckle to come back more than occasionally. Personally, I found only one strip with a remark I thought was offensive and unnecessary, but Yirmumah, unlike other strips that walk the line, has long since made up for it with ten kinds of funny.
The Story: There's not much here in way of story. A starving cartoonist, Drew, and a starving writer-buddy, Bob, stumble through life in all its glorious absurdity. While this is the general scene, the creators don't let it get in the way of anything they find funny. I personally enjoy the frequent topical asides. For better or worse, this is not a strip that treads very deeply into storied waters though.
The Art: Coffman's a talented cartoonist. Other than the occasional background photograph, he draws each panel, seemingly without a template. This might be an obvious expectation for cartoonists, but more and more strips seem to rely on drawing templates. I guess it insures uniformity of character designs, but lots of them, even some of the more popular, seem to stop at about four poses. I think, more often than not, the templates are designed to save time or mask drawing problems. Coffman does with his characters whatever the scene calls for and it's refreshing to see a strip that combines confident, energetic art with in-your-face writing.
The result is art that's a little less crisp than PVP or Penny Arcade, but with much more energy to every character and line. On top of all that energy, Coffman employs an impressive range of expressions, though a couple get overused (Hell, I should talk. I think I've got only four or five each for HB and Pink.).
The Funny: Yirmumah is at least funny every day. Once in a while, it is absolutely hilarious. I found the 2004 Christmas episode to be particularly funny and I could list ten more that made me smile, but you'll be better off digging through the archives yourself.
The strip is on the verge of making my very small list of strips and sites I regularly check out (I think I'm down to five). I'm going to give the RSS feed a shot for a week or two (another plus for the site).
In our correspondence in setting up this review, I think
Coffman wrote that he could take whatever I could dish out so I shouldn't hold
back. I feel like I'd be letting him down if I didn't come up with something
so, um...Why the $#&% are you selling your comics for a buck and a half? Three
bucks, man. You can get double the price. I'm guessing they were
printed
a while back or something 'cause they'd cost almost that to print, I
think, or, hmm - just noticed it's only 16 pages and a mini. This stuff
is worthy of the full treatment. Get these in
the comic shops, and soon. (The one danger of some of the topical stuff
is it may be out of the public conscience by the time it makes it to
print.).
Thanks for submitting the strip. I enjoyed this one, almost every click of it. Please keep them coming
folks. Lots of great ones are starting to come in.
And now a word from our sponsor, or serious lack thereof:
(I haven't mentioned the store in these reviews before, but as I'm self-employed (web-design) and business is slow at the moment, I need to start offering more swag here. Currently, prints and original art for all strips are for sale in the store for between $25 and $50. They're each in color, matted, signed and dated, and suitable for framing. The fifty bucks'll get you original pencils with a high resolution acetate overlay containing colors, borders and lettering. I've already done a few and they look great. Oh, and the price includes shipping in the US. If visitors don't mind, I'll continue to post announcements as new things get added to the store. Thanks for taking a look.)
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