Review: Dithering Doodles 19

Dithering Doodles 19

Steven Anderson
Self-Released
Street: 09.04

There is a place where inner and outer worlds combine like Voltron; where tsunamis are humanity’s greatest enemy; where Lucy (you know, Miss 5¢ psychiatrist from Peanuts) finally gets what she deserves; and Cracker Barrel is a toilet-plunger swashbuckling hellhole. This place is the comically tuned mind of Steven Anderson, and luckily for us, the cosmic goo of Anderson’s thoughts have spilled out on paper to create Dithering Doodles 19. A DIY project from start to finish (printed in black and white on average-grade office paper), this little zine is surprisingly diverse in its content and humor—featuring caricatures of humans, animals and other creatures in a escapade of slapstick, surprise, word-play, satirical and toilet-based comedy. The one potential fault of the work is its pacing: On one hand, the rapid-fire style builds and propels the energy from page to page until the audience is crippled in laughter, and on the other hand, it forces some (extremely promising) jokes to exist in under-developed forms (see panels on pages 9–11 and 17)—yet this fault is not noticeably destructive to the whole. Overall, Dithering Doodles is a hilarious adventure, easily worth the $1 price, and still better for you than Facebook. –Z. Smith