Here I review two Tommy Toothhead comics: Tommy Toothhead And His Dog & Tommy Toothhead and the Homeless Guy.
But hey! These flipbooks are designed to be read in 2 directions to the centre pages. The basic idea is that in one direction you read Good Tommy Toothhead & the other Bad Tommy Toothhead. Egads! - That's 4 comics?!
Reading from each side you are presented the same scenario from either the 'good' or 'bad' Tommy Toothhead persona: for instance on the 'Good' cover of the Tommy Toothhead and his Dog, the character is saying, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice" – an over saccharine sentiment (which would suggest there is a liberal use of irony here). This is countered on the 'Bad' cover with "I made you a shit sandwich"... this is not, presumably a badly made sandwich, but an unpalatable scatological snack. All this sets the tone of these volumes very well.
Hmm - talking of 'shit' - it seems somewhat anomalous to mention "shit" on the cover while within the comic the phrase "Beat the snot out of you" is uttered by a menacing Bad Tommy.
So what happens in the comics? Do tell. Well - Tommy talks to his dog in the ...And His Dog issue & he chats with a vagrant in the ...And the Homeless Guy issue; so far so self explanatory. These books aren't really about the conveyance of a story or 'The Gripping Adventures of Tommy Saviour of The Universe' & all that. No, these mini comics play with an idea and they have a bit of a laff. One panel a page, the dialogue is played out & reflected in the counter scenario.
The cartooning is stylised & seems to be informed with a graphic design sensibility. I suspect that Tommy started out as a doodle with extended spiky hair integrated into the shape of the head, as per Bart Simpson. The shape of the head creates a pleasing three pronged design motif, which sort of resembles a tooth; thus a character is born.
Photocopies are used in the production of this comic, or the use of manipulated repeated images. This gives it a feel of stills taken from a cut-out animation sequence. The small changes that are made in each panel create little panel-to-panel/page-to-page variance, but that's not really to the detriment of the comic because this is more about playing with format.
Thought has gone into these little comics: from the premise to the presentation, care has been made in their creation; like the selection of a good quality paper stock for the covers with images stuck onto the outer & inner cover by hand. These are little touches; the added ingredients, which add up making the whole: a couple of pleasant & engaging mini comics.
mooncat