Boring

by Noah Van Sciver

Plagued with nightmares and Anxiety, a friendless cartoonist struggles with his work, collects trash and wanders the street aimlessly. A very boring story.
40 pages, black and white.

40 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2021

About the author

[copied from: http://nvansciver.wordpress.com/about/]

I am THE one and only Noah Van Sciver, cartoonist/comic strip artist and illustrator. I’m best known for my alternative comic book series Blammo and my weekly comic strip 4 Questions which appears every week in the alternative newspaper Westword. My work has appeared in The Best American comics 2011, Mad magazine, Sunstone, The Comics Journal, MOME and numerous comics anthologies. I’m currently hard at work on my first graphic novel The Hypo which will be published by Fantagraphics books upon its completion. I’m a cancer and I hate seafood, and adventure.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another case of why I love to check out mini-comics/zine comics from artists I like or am curious about. Especially when I hit a comic con and check the independent comic creators' tables and find some absolute treasures. No difference here, as both stories hit home in completely different ways. Fun, introspective, nostalgic... boring. In a good way.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, earnest and pleasant as most of NVS' autobio comics tend to be. Most cartoonists would struggle to pull off this kind of stuff since it would probably be boring (pun intended), but it just works so well since the pacing is impeccable.

[antisocialni tvor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upřímně, pohodové, k zamyšlení, autobiografické. Žádné jiné příběhy či grafické sešity jsem od tohoto autora nečetla, ale zaujal mě styl vyprávění, detailů, easter eggů nebo skrytých vtipů.

[Matt Graupman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In comics, there are a handful of really prolific writers and artists and writer/artists - Nate Powell and Jeff Lemire spring to mind immediately - but I don’t think anyone can top Noah Van Sciver. He’s a firehose of creativity but what makes his output so impressive is its variety. More so than really any other cartoonist, he’s comfortable with comedy, drama, biography, action, autobiography, etc. across a wide breadth of formats, from online gag strips to self-published zines to big time graphic novels. There’s seemingly nothing he can’t do.

“Boring” is one of his smaller comics, collecting two short stories, the diaristic “Boring” and the nostalgic “My Own Jurassic Park.” (with a bonus one-pager, “Youth!,” on the inside back cover). Compared to some of his more recent work, these pieces are a little looser, like they were spontaneous sketchbook comics that he decided to publish at the last minute, but that less-structured approach gives each comic a nice intimate feeling. Of course, it’s Noah Van Sciver; he’s not generally known for holding anything back.

Far from being a stopgap book in between his bigger projects, “Boring” is another star in his ever-expanding galaxy of work. One of the many great things about his comics is that you never have to wait very long for the next one.

[J.T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything but.