By: S. Steven Struble (writer, colors, letters) & Sina Grace (art)
The Story: LDB and his girlfriend (?) Jaz go shopping and plan for a party.
What’s Good: Lil Depressed Boy continues to do a few things really well. For one thing, it captures those everyday situations that young guys get into when they first meet a cute girl. The first issue covered the mere fact that the girl liked LDB. The second had a TON of fun with the fact that LDB couldn’t actually remember her name (it’s Jaz).
This issue gets into some of those other things that happen once you become a couple: She’s going to take you shopping. Ugh! She’s going to drag you to parties with her friends who you don’t like nearly as much as you like her. Ugh! You’re going to have to give her presents. Yikes!
Pretty much every guy in the world has been through some iteration of those situations, so there is a lot to connect with. I also personally, read through this as a middle-aged man thinking, “Wow. I certainly did that, but boy, was that stupid and I could have handled it better knowing what I know now!” I’d be curious to know how younger men or women connect with the basic stories in LDB, but I expect that these stories provide a very nice blank slate for any reader to project their own personal experiences.
LDB remains a nice, crisp and refreshing comic that is a breath of fresh air on the shelves.
What’s Not So Good: This third issue just isn’t quite as sweet and charming as the first two. Perhaps it is because it dips into the mundane, day-to-day of a relationship and gets away from the excitement of meeting someone new, but this issue just didn’t have “it”. It isn’t “bad”, but it just didn’t have that electric quality that made the first two really stand apart from the pack.
The art also wasn’t quite as crisp as the first two issues. The characters still sell their emotions really well, but there were quite a few panels where I thought the colors were overpowering the linework to the extent that you almost couldn’t even see the lines. I’m such a fan of nice linework that I dislike anything getting in the way.
In the realm of making excuses… I’m fairly certain that this was released as a webcomic first. Since webcomics are almost always done by folks who are working full-time jobs, sometimes their release schedules get crazy and that can lead to some chopping storytelling or different art as newer creators grow in their styles. It’s also true that the task of adapting a webcomic that is usually released a few panels at a time to a 22-page comic isn’t always smooth.
Conclusion: Still worth checking out, but not quite as lively as the first two issues. However, our comics world is richer for the fact that we have comics like LDB out there exploring the oddities of LIFE instead of being full of spandex-clad characters fighting each other.
Grade: C+
-Dean Stell
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Filed under: Image Comics Tagged: | Dean Stell, Image, Lil Depressed Boy, review, S. Steven Struble, Sina Grace, The Li'l Depressed Boy, The Li'l Depressed Boy #3, The Li'l Depressed Boy #3 review
