If you follow me on Facebook, twitter, last.fm, or just about any other social network web 2.0 microblog, then you will already know that I am a fan of John Campbell’s webcomic, Pictures for Sad Children. I’ve been following his weekly strip since Paul (who is a ghost) tried to get his apartment back. The humor is incessantly bleak and misanthropic, like if Steven Wright only told dead baby jokes. And yet the appeal is that it makes you feel invincible to be able to laugh at terrible things. Like this.
Well, someone else has seen Campbell’s talent and decided to give him his own art show. The work was monochromatic, like the strip, and still contained that dark awkward hopelessness.
I’ll admit that maybe it is possible that I find a lot of myself in Campbell’s work; I can relate. But the universality of the sentiments cannot be denied. Who hasn’t had these nagging thoughts that everything is sad and terrible and hopeless? But who among us has the courage to speak it aloud. Okay, I’m getting hyperbolic. Let me leave you with one of my favorite PFSC strips:
