Week 14 The 21st century

        This week was incredibly appealing to me because when I saw the suggested and required reading, two works that I was already a huge fan of were in the list. Those were Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Nicholas Gurewitch's Perry Bible Fellowship.

I think the main reason I was drawn to these works years ago, was their ability to use cute and funny drawings or ideas and make them over the top dark and disturbing. My oldest brother who is 10 years older than me introduced me to JTHM (by accident, because when I say he introduced me, I mean he left the Z? book out and I looked through it at a very young age.) I discovered PBF at a rather young age of about 13, most likely a few years before the ideal target audience.
 
     Perry Bible fellowship uses minimal words and very limited paneling and still tells a small story. What sets both PBF  apart from many comics, is that their isn't a huge over arching story, and every comic is a one shot. This is the case with many webcomics, but not all. I used to read a webcomic called Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, which has had a steady narrative with the same and new characters since 2003. For the most part, QC has been put up every day, which is an incredible feat.

     JTHM has some aspects of this one shot property, because other than the fact that Johnny keeps coming back, after his first break in and meeting with Squee, all the stories are individual. Many of the stories in JTHM don't even involve him and are just random strange and disturbing thought strips.