3 crampons out of 5

Covering the collections Pamplemousse and Everybody vs. Bob the Angry Flower

It comes so close.  Steve Notley’s “Bob” is like the sloppy, angry Calvin and Hobbes.  It’s got the same dreamlike flow to it, where panels slumber along to either a conclusion or a pun or nothing at all, and Notley’s sitting on some ideas and knowledge that bring some surprising depth to what should be (and generally is) a silly strip.  But whereas Watterson is, god damn, a genius and all, Notley is sort of self-obsessed, and derails his own comic at times by being too self-aware with it.

This type of analyzation is stupid for a comic about a talking flower and his buddy fetus and tree stump, but whatever.

Several things are perpetually interesting about Bob and keep me reading: that Notley’s style, though it has grown, never really gets “professional.”  I mean this in as complimentary a fashion as possible – normally a strip’s artist’s pen will get sort of homogenized over the years, taking on a comfortable, repetitive look to it.  But Notley always looks a little sloppy and frantic and it fits Bob’s bipolar nature – he also seems to constantly push himself to draw ideas that are truly bigger than the page, so while he might not have the chops at any given point to throw all of this stuff on the page, it’s not going to prevent him from stopping.

Admittedly, I’m reviewing the collected books here and not Notley’s website, which is sort of stupid hard to navigate (purposeful?) because I think that’s how Bob works best, when you can cuddle up to some of the repeated jokes and compare all of the title panels page by page to note how Notley has ridiculously made them all at least a little different… he also stuffs annotations and extras into the book that blow my mind, how many words must clutter up that dude’s brain.

So why only three crampons?  Well, it just… it just comes so close, sometimes, to being genius that it’s hard not to get disappointed.  Notley will be building up a concept and then just give up, or will substitute yelling or self-aware humor for substance at points.  And all of those annotations get a tad self-serving at times…  It’s enough to prevent you from shoving the book in someone’s hand and saying “read this now” (sorry, Steve).  Bob is better stumbled across on your own, finding your own pace at which to get used to his outbursts.