Weird World of Webcomics: Adam Ellis’ Books of Adam

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have… well, apparently you have Books of Adam – a highly entertaining webcomic about life by cartoonist/blogger Adam Ellis. Set up as a series of autobiographical short stories and anecdotes, alongside tongue-in-cheek social commentary, Books of Adam is in no shortage of “the funny.” There’s funny food art, zombies eating babies and even immortal, soul-sucking felines.

There’s sort of a Jhonen Vasquez or Nate Bellegarde feel to Ellis’ artwork, though he manages to avoid the typical “doom and gloom” snarky-ness of his peers (that’s a good thing). In place of the “doom and gloom” Ellis provides us with an ever-changing cast of characters (there are a few mainstays) who are too messed up to be anything except based on real people. It’s all rendered in minimalistic grayscale (there are some in color on Tumblr) and yet Ellis spares no detail in each panel, from Easter Eggs he’s hidden in the background or the textures in each character’s hair or clothes.

Worth checking out, Books of Adam updates infrequently but there’s plenty of archived comics that can be read at www.booksofadam.com.