PX87: Work is Hell

Work is Hell by Matt Groening (231x230mm)

I seem to remember this sort of thing becoming a tradition in Life in Hell books?

Anyway, this is the second Life in Hell collection, and it seems to be more considered commercially. We get an introduction to all the characters, and the characters now definitely have names.

As with Love is Hell, we start off with a series of recent strips about the titular subject. Which is that work sucks. (Which is true.)

After that, we get a pretty random selection of strips ranging back to 1982 (but mostly pretty recent strips). I remember being just fascinated by these pages as a teenager.

“Lowercase signatures”? Is that a dig at art spiegelman?

In most of the strips, Binky is put-upon and long-suffering (which is natural for a viewpoint character in a strip like this), but here’s a rare one that seems to indicate that the problem is himself.

Probably not as popular.

Aww. That’s the sweetest cartoon ever.

This is probably true:

I have not read this book in a long time, but it came out about the time I got my first adult job working 8-5 in a cubie. It made life tolerable, hence 5 stars for being a life altering work.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

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