What do you think?
Rate this book
What We Mean by Yesterday: Vol. 1
The story of a man driven to the edge ― and beyond ― by the world around him. But if he’s the good guy, then who is the bad guy? Bruce Barnes is a schoolteacher having yet another shit day. His students are a disrespectful nightmare, gleefully relishing the misery they put him through. But today is even worse than usual, and after a particularly grim run-in with a student, he heads to the break room to bum a smoke off another member of the faculty. After lighting up, he’s told the cigarette is laced with amphetamines. From there, Bruce rides his “rage snake” from the classroom to the ends of the cosmos and back ― fighting, fucking, shooting, racing, and tripping his way from one impulsive move to the next. Reminiscent of films like Falling Down and shows like Breaking Bad , What We Mean By Yesterday is a black comedy descent into madness, a revenge horror/fantasy that gives new meaning to the phrase “bad trip.” What We Mean By Yesterday began as a daily comic strip, one page per day, posted on Marra’s Instagram (@benjamin_marra). Originally begun as an experiment in drawing faster and looser, it quickly became one of the more popular pandemic era webcomics, followed by over 20,000 readers daily. Black-and-white illustrations throughout
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
514 pages, Paperback
Published August 20, 2024
27 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Marra
56 books29 followersBenjamin Marra (born 1977 in Halifax, Nova Scotia) is a Grammy-nominated American illustrator and comic book artist. His work has been mostly self-published under his own imprint, Traditional Comics, and mainly consists of black and white comics, printed on low-quality paper for a relatively low price.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 2, 2024
Ride the rage snake ! Experience Bruce Barnes' bad trip getting out of hand, firsthand !
It started as a hugely popular daily webcomic experiment, now in print !
At least 10 volumes to follow !
I did a vlog about it ! :
https://youtu.be/UlbQisW-pKQ
September 15, 2024
What We Mean by Yesterday is Benjamin Marra's ongoing daily webcomic where he utilizes a looser, free-wheeling and minimalistic style to efficiently deliver a continuous story to well over 20,000 daily readers. The first 500 or so entries have been compiled into this first volume, but despite the thick page count the reading experience is fairly breezy due to the rigid 4-panel per page structure and the levity within the text.
The premise is fairly simple - Bruce Bowers, a somewhat jaded schoolteacher, mistakenly partakes in a cigarette laced with amphetamines and abandons his mild-mannered persona to become more aggressive and violent. Bruce's descent into madness is captured in the subsequent series of strips in Marra's typical sense of excess and escalating action, which works pretty well...initially. The premise is a solid enough foundation for Marra who is no stranger to lampooning action movie tropes in subversive and engaging ways, but here it is undoubtedly stretched beyond thin. Strips have a tendency towards repetitiveness, particularly those relying on a narrative formula, and unfortunately What We Mean by Yesterday does fall into this trap often. Bruce continually finds himself in hopeless situations, but will always come up on top due to some testosterone-fueled machismo that often defies physics. That isn't to say there isn't some continuing wear-and-tear on Bruce who does appear more disheveled as the story continues but that doesn't take away from the formulaic design of the strip. But unlike strips, Marra also engages in a lot of decompressed storytelling where several sequences end up becoming drawn out over many pages, making it hard for me to believe that the readers of the daily strips can really stay engaged reading it in this fashion.
Even the artwork isn't all that appealing to me either. I've been a fan of Marra's art ever since I picked up a copy of Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T. whereby the use of a highly expressionistic and cartoonish style allows for the overindulgence in violence and debauchery to come off as blithe and farcical. The style served as a nice supplement to the satirical tone of the storytelling, and though it was minimalistic in design, it still felt appropriately slick and differentiated from other artists working the medium. I recognize this type of style is difficult to apply for thousands of pages of strips, but it's hard not to see the art style used here as a step down. The foundational design of the cartooning is more than sound here, don't get me wrong. But it maintains a very rushed sensibility that though is effectively telling the story, can also look increasingly bland when reading many strips in a row.
In his brief introduction to the book, Marra does mention that ""ideally it's read one strip per day at 3 P.M". I will concede that it would be more suitable to read this at a more leisurely pace than I did, though I also don't really think the individual strips are really all that satiating nor memorable enough to justify taking a year and a half to get through the entire book. What We Mean by Yesterday does at times strike up some fairly intriguing plot beats throughout, so by no means is this a boring read altogether, but as part of an entire evolving story I really can't see the appeal in continuing on by the end of this volume.
The premise is fairly simple - Bruce Bowers, a somewhat jaded schoolteacher, mistakenly partakes in a cigarette laced with amphetamines and abandons his mild-mannered persona to become more aggressive and violent. Bruce's descent into madness is captured in the subsequent series of strips in Marra's typical sense of excess and escalating action, which works pretty well...initially. The premise is a solid enough foundation for Marra who is no stranger to lampooning action movie tropes in subversive and engaging ways, but here it is undoubtedly stretched beyond thin. Strips have a tendency towards repetitiveness, particularly those relying on a narrative formula, and unfortunately What We Mean by Yesterday does fall into this trap often. Bruce continually finds himself in hopeless situations, but will always come up on top due to some testosterone-fueled machismo that often defies physics. That isn't to say there isn't some continuing wear-and-tear on Bruce who does appear more disheveled as the story continues but that doesn't take away from the formulaic design of the strip. But unlike strips, Marra also engages in a lot of decompressed storytelling where several sequences end up becoming drawn out over many pages, making it hard for me to believe that the readers of the daily strips can really stay engaged reading it in this fashion.
Even the artwork isn't all that appealing to me either. I've been a fan of Marra's art ever since I picked up a copy of Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T. whereby the use of a highly expressionistic and cartoonish style allows for the overindulgence in violence and debauchery to come off as blithe and farcical. The style served as a nice supplement to the satirical tone of the storytelling, and though it was minimalistic in design, it still felt appropriately slick and differentiated from other artists working the medium. I recognize this type of style is difficult to apply for thousands of pages of strips, but it's hard not to see the art style used here as a step down. The foundational design of the cartooning is more than sound here, don't get me wrong. But it maintains a very rushed sensibility that though is effectively telling the story, can also look increasingly bland when reading many strips in a row.
In his brief introduction to the book, Marra does mention that ""ideally it's read one strip per day at 3 P.M". I will concede that it would be more suitable to read this at a more leisurely pace than I did, though I also don't really think the individual strips are really all that satiating nor memorable enough to justify taking a year and a half to get through the entire book. What We Mean by Yesterday does at times strike up some fairly intriguing plot beats throughout, so by no means is this a boring read altogether, but as part of an entire evolving story I really can't see the appeal in continuing on by the end of this volume.
Read
March 12, 2025only graphic novel i had in my apartment … read while my phone was charging 😭😭 pretty fun but made me remember what turned me off graphic novels in the first place … not my favorite format for an actual compelling narrative
June 15, 2025
A wild ride through one man’s meltdown—equal parts funny, furious, and flat-out deranged. Think Breaking Bad on a bad acid trip, drawn quickly in Sharpie.
September 28, 2024
Sorry Benjamin, I read it all in one sitting :(
Okay real review. Loved the art a lot, really goofy but still grounded in reality (well, mostly), very reminiscent of early Mike Judge animation and really just 90’s independent animation (and comics) in general. I really liked how it looked. The story and dialogue are fine. It felt kinda unintentionally meandery, but the parts that worked definitely worked, and a lot of the problems I have with the first volume may end up alleviated later on, since, again, this is only the first volume. I especially loved the scene where it went inside his mind and showed the snake and bird and all that shit, that part was really cool. So I may not have loved the book as a whole, but I’m definitely open to checking out future installments and seeing where it all goes.
Okay real review. Loved the art a lot, really goofy but still grounded in reality (well, mostly), very reminiscent of early Mike Judge animation and really just 90’s independent animation (and comics) in general. I really liked how it looked. The story and dialogue are fine. It felt kinda unintentionally meandery, but the parts that worked definitely worked, and a lot of the problems I have with the first volume may end up alleviated later on, since, again, this is only the first volume. I especially loved the scene where it went inside his mind and showed the snake and bird and all that shit, that part was really cool. So I may not have loved the book as a whole, but I’m definitely open to checking out future installments and seeing where it all goes.
April 26, 2025
Part of the modern web comics movement where you get lil bits of comic everyday. Apparently this one has been going for a long time and a bunch of them have been collected by fantagraphics in a squat, brick-like book. Marra says the style is loose and that you should only read a page a day (even explaining how to use a bookmark to keep you from spoiling the next day’s page…Jesus) but really a comic book is meant to be read through, and this one is gonna be potentially ten volumes when it’s all said and done (so says Marra). It’s like a manga, though so far the story isn’t as engrossing as it is stupid and crass and only funny enough. kinda cheap at a four panels a page. Dunno if it’s worth the price tag. More of a 3.5 than a 3 star baby. The web comic to graphic novel pipeline doesn’t feel like a great marriage.
November 11, 2024
I didn't follow the rules, because I don't have over 500 days to relive this project. Overall, I really enjoyed this shaggy dog story. It was violent and porny and yet another "white man breaks bad" story (like an even more NSFW Falling Down) but I compulsively gobbled up the whole thing.
September 2, 2024
Effective storytelling through stripped-down cartooning. Looking forward to Vol. 2!
November 5, 2024
Honestly... I don't even know what to make of this
November 15, 2024
Animal crackers
A pack of Imperials
And palpable rage
A pack of Imperials
And palpable rage
May 2, 2025
This absurdist, high octane, adventure graphic novel full of sex, drugs, and ridiculousness, hit all the right spots of a 90s action movie.
May 31, 2025
crude. it’s alright. borrowed this from the library bc i liked the authors note of praying loose drawing with daily comics. story’s random but it’s eh.
July 20, 2025
Just amazing like everything he's done...
January 8, 2025
Picked it up at my local library because it was prominently displayed. I did not know what to expect and I loved it!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews