Johnny Optimism - Volume One: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stranger

by Stilton Jarlsberg

Welcome to Johnny's world and the first-ever collection of cartoons from the wildly popular webcomic! Johnny Optimism is a darkly comic look at a wheelchair-bound boy who lives in a very strange hospital, and his unending effort to look on the bright side because "things could always get worse." And they do get worse, time after time. Johnny interacts with a highly unusual collection of medical professionals, bureaucrats, strange kids, fellow sufferers, a manic helper monkey, a creepy clown and more - getting real comfort only from his faithful dog, Lance. Together they're trying to cope with Life...just like the rest of us. • Deliciously sick humor for fans of Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, The Far Side, or Max Cannon's Red Meat. • Kindle version optimized for reading on tablets and phones, making it easier to laugh out loud in inappropriate settings! • A great "get well" present whether you actually want the recipient to get well or not. • 600 cartoons! Read it in the bathroom until, like Johnny, you can't feel your legs anymore! • Author's notes on where "Johnny Optimism" came from, and why it's not as sick as you think. Maybe. • A perfect gift for anyone in the medical field. Or an undertaker. • Do your part to put a copy of this book in every doctor's waiting room nationwide! Be the Johnny Appleseed of sick humor!

201 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 5, 2019

Reviews

[Pat Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Can't Read This Book and Stay Blue

...unless you hold your breath while searching in it for a cartoon that's NOT funny. Or too dark to laugh at.

Truly, Johnny Optimism has the worst luck—and the best sense of humor—in the hospital, if not the world. You've got to love him!

You'll also meet an astounding array of characters, like Tickles the creepy clown, the homicidal child with her duck puppet, cowboy-kid Pepe the epileptic, and the reading girl with her gloomy predictions of all the things that can kill you. Like a slipper. (I'm not telling. Read the book and find out. Or live the rest of your life in fear of comfortable footwear.)

The only downer in the book? It's Volume One. There's a whole 'nother book, at least, of Johnny Optimism jokes I'll have to wait to read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious! Also, probably really offensive to people who lack a sense of humor. Johnny doesn't mock the sick and disabled, he makes funny observations about sickness and disability.

This is a comic that the world would miss out on without the internet. It's really funny, but way too dark and edgy for any mainstream media.

Some of the strips aren't funny and a few really are in bad taste, but overall this is a really good collection of comics.

Is there a word for this style of comic? Johnny optimism re-uses a small stable of images and gets all of the jokes in with the dialog. Red Meat is in the same style, but I don't know what that style is called.

[Kelley Judd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I survived

I am stronger for reading this book. Whole-heartedly recommended reading, could not put it down. Contains laugh-out-loud humor. Looking forward to the next book.