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Three Word Phrase
posted September 15, 2010
 




Creator: Ryan Pequin
Publishing Information: Self-Published, Mini-Comic, 20 pages, 2010, no price given
Ordering Numbers: web site

I'm not sure what else to say about this mini-comic of strips and starts to strips from Ryan Pequin of the on-line cartoon Three Word Phrase except that I found it funny, more silly than clever, with a clear sense of where the various lines to be crossed with this kind of material might lie and how to dance right up to them. As with all things humorous, your take on the material could be wildly different. I'm happy for a mini-comic introduction -- apparently this book was done so Pequin would have something in his hands to give a way and/or sell at SPX -- because I'd missed Pequin's on-line activities outright. I was actually surprised to see some of the same gags at the site, as the mini has a ragged, sketchbook quality to it, like seeing a rapper's rhyme books as opposed to listening to their fully-produced songs. That dashed-off quality is I suppose part of the idea, and provides the feature with a low-risk, no-worries tone that coaxes the laughs out of its reader rather than demands it. You get a real impression of Pequin telling you a joke rather than simply seeing and processing a joke on the page, a powerful intoxicant for so many readers that probably passed notes like this in class. The shorter and dumber the gags were, the more I liked them, although he does drift into Ruben Bolling-style high-concepts once or twice with fair accomplishment.