Review: 110%

110%
Written and Drawn by Tony Consiglio
Published by Top Shelf Productions. $12.95 USD

You ever have one of these artists you like, that you rave about to friends for years, and then that artist puts out something bad and it just so happens that's the time one of your friends finally tries this artist out? And you're like, "No, dude--don't get THAT Ryan Adams cd...go get THIS one." But it's too late. First impressions and all that. Well, I think Tony Consiglio is pretty talented, but this is that book of his not to recommend to, well, anybody.'

Consiglio often comes off like a rougher, hornier version of his friend Alex Robinson, and that's usually not a bad thing. This story, though, which follows three women ranging from their 30s to maybe mid-50s who all have an obsession with fictional boy band 110%, reads like early trimmings from a Robinson ensemble graphic novel. It's stuff you dump when you start to figure out what you're really trying to say. Or I could be wrong, and Consiglio consciously intended to present these three women as little more than objects of derision that readers could sneer at for over 130 pages. What fun. True, two of the three women get over this obsession, and seem to have fuller lives due to outgrowing it, but Consiglio gives us little reason to care about them. I found most of the scenes really crass, with a scorn towards these characters preventing any identification with them. Better these characters were never born, if this was how their creator was going to treat them.