E and Mu (1 Pint)

E and Mu
by Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall
www.eandmu.com

Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts amused me.

I had coffee for breakfast.

I like coffee.

This webcomic?

Not so much.

Ahem. So, yeah, E and Mu reads like Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts if Jack had been bored and existential instead of witty and funny. Each comic is a one-panel non sequitur about... well, I'm honestly not sure what. The About page - which has black text on a black background, I had to drag and select it just to read it - explains that it's basically the inner thoughts of the creator's mind. That's nice, but without the context of who the creator is and what the hell he's talking about, it makes precious little sense. Much of the time, I felt like a kid on Southpark, watching the adults do random, pointless shit and going, ...'kay. A few of the pages had a bit of humor or insight to them, but most just seemed pointless.

To me, at least.

To the creator, I'm sure there is plenty of point and meaning, but again, without any context I 'll never know. It was basically like reading a fortune-cookie script, spiting out random phrases that are supposed to sound wise and deep, but instead just make you shrug. In fact, I amused myself by adding 'in bed' to the end of each, just for shits and giggles, and was not at all surprised that it worked as well as it does on fortune cookies.

That's not a good thing.

Comics like this are insular in the extreme - the reader, given no direction, context or background, is left to marvel at the deep, philosophical mind of the creator, when instead they usually just go elsewhere. If one is writing only for themself, it's not a webcomic. It's a diary. In this case, a diary with art as vague and unformed as the writing. Maybe that's what the creator wants and is in fact going for.

If so, good luck with that.