Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us: A Johnny Wander Collection (edició 2017)

This comic felt like reading a slice-of-life fiction. Although I guess it was based on the authors' lives, so it really is slice-of-life. I didn't find it funny but was very much amused by it. I could relate to very few parts of the comic but could empathize with most of the content. Would highly recommend it.

Note - I received a free copy of the book from the publisher. This has not influenced my review in any way. ( )

I love Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh's works and their individual ones as well. I literally have Buzz! and Lucky Penny on my bookshelf now. I didn't know about their webcomic though. *whispers* I'm a Bad Fan.

STORY:
"I hate octopuses.

An animal that gross has no business being that smart.—John (pg 236)."
Our Cats are More Famous Than Us by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota (416 pages) is about their day-to-day lives (really, there's a lot of morning coffee drinking here) in comic form. Some of the comics focus on cultural things (between Japanese and Indian culture), apartment shenanigans, the art process, and, of course, their many cats. I'm not a cat lover, but I find the cat comics super adorable. Maybe it's because they are drawn so cutely?

There's even a surprise conclusion that's pretty heartwarming. I didn't see it coming. But I wish them happiness regarding it.

ART:

It's grrrreat *in my Tony the Tiger voice* I like the color direction too.

CHARACTERS:

Well, these are all supposed to be portrayals of the real-life authors and their friends. Their friend John is absolutely hilarious. Everything he says (in the webcomic) sounds like the lead in an action thriller.

OVERALL:

Don't be scared by the thickness of this omnibus. You can read this book so quickly because the comics themselves are usually between 3-5 panels.

I definitely recommend it. :D ( )

These humor strips are too mild for their own good, never once drawing an audible laugh from me, just the occasional silent appreciation. Too often I felt I was witness to an in joke that would be hilarious to the creators and their friends. And though the strips are autobiographical, I felt the creators didn't actually share that much of themselves. I mean, for the longest time while reading I wasn't even sure if the the creators were romantically involved or just roommates or how many of the other characters were also living with them. And as for all the other people who kept appearing in the strip, I still have no idea who the hell they are. Friends? Relatives? Hostages? If you are doing a humor strip, you have to be funny. If you are doing an autobiographical strip you need to share more. If you fail to commit one way or the other, you get this inoffensive pile of pap. ( )

Freaking hilarious. Feels like I'm hanging out with friends.

It's obnoxiously thick for a graphic novel and the ink is different for each quarter of the book: pink to blue to orange to purple. Why? What did nice old-fashioned black ink do wrong? Didn't the publisher realize it'd be difficult to make out pink and orange images under my orange reading lamp? The cats are in 5% of the content - why is the title about cats? Lies.

Petty formatting grievances aside - I love it. ( )

I understand the sentiment. Tesfa had a birthday party for our cat the same day as my party. More people came for the cat party.

Little slice-of-life comics collected together. No real over-arching plot. At the end they get married (out of nowhere, but maybe if I had followed along on the webcomic it wouldn't have been so out of nowhere). There are cats. I enjoy reading books where cats are present. Ananth and Yuko's cats seem very much like my two cats (although, perhaps all cats seem like my cats because all cats are essentially interchangeable and we cat lovers are deluding ourselves into giving our pets personalities and ... nah. Cats are each and every one uniquely awesome.)

Nothing earth shattering, but a pleasant way to spend an hour, reading about cats and New York and bits of other people's lives.

Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us by Ananth Hirsch and Yuko Ota went on sale March 29, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )