Here’s the good news: over the course of its 600-plus page archive, the art on Been Better improves. Creator Jimmy Purcell’s characters begin to look less flat and more rounded, and he becomes far more adept at coloring each day’s entry in ways that help, rather than hinder, the art.

Here’s the bad news: for whatever reason, it took a long time for each individual page to load, so I had to skip the middle third of the archives in order to get this review done on time. So, I can’t tell you exactly when you’ll notice the art improving, just that somewhere between page 200 and page 550, it does.

There are lots of autobiographical comics out there. Some, like the classic newspaper strip “For Better or For Worse,” are only loosely based on the real family life of the creator. Some, like the increasingly popular webcomic “Allan,” are almost too devoted to “keeping it real.” “Been Better” is somewhere in the middle. Purcell retains his friends’, family’s, and coworkers’ real names (and we can assume the visuals are at least decent caricatures of what these people really look like), but he allows the strip to move into “what if” territory fairly often – especially when dealing with the customers at his various jobs over the years (as, for instance, here).

Here’s my problem: it takes a long time for us to be introduced to Jimmy’s friends by name, and either the “bios” page really is completely empty or there’s a glitch in my connection. The early strips are drawn and written in a way that implies we should know very well who these people are and what their relationship to Jimmy is. The woman I assumed was Jimmy’s mother because of strips like this, he later addresses as Cindy which strikes me as an odd way to address your Mom – unless she’s your older sister or step-mom. I’m still not sure who she is, since I had to skip that large section of the archives. A functioning cast page would have helped. (Whoever she is, she’s obviously formidable. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the alarm clock with her around.)

Purcell does attempt to keep the comic humorous, rarely straying into deep sentimentality although there are occasional doses of late-teenage-angst, especially early on. The usual pop culture and topical commentary works its way in (is there a “slice of life” strip anywhere on the web or in print that doesn’t touch on those topics?), as with this recent strip about the Olympics. There are some strips that have straightforward punchlines like this one. Unfortunately, there are a good number of strips that just didn’t elicit any reaction out of me at all – not a laugh, not a groan, not even a sympathy chuckle.

One of the artistic touches I did like is that Jimmy’s glasses tend to function with the same expressiveness as other characters’ eyes. Sometimes, this puts just the right emphasis on a reaction, and sometimes it can be a bit disconcerting, as with the Olympic strip mentioned above.

Overall, I’d give Been Better a healthy 3 stars. Yes, it could have been better, but it could also have been so much worse. Rating:

Been Better

http://beenbettercomic.com

by Jimmy Purcell
reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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