Tag: Dave Kellett

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Pop Culture: Building a Better Tomorrow by Avoiding Today by Dave Kellett

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

The Sheldon series of comics features a young boy who accidentally became a millionaire with a dot-com. He lives with his grandfather, a talking duck, a squeeing lizard, and a farty pug.

He, like the author Dave Kellett, is a total nerd.

We know they’re nerds because Pop Culture! is 237 pages long and is wholly made up of comics about pop culture nerdery — as many as 3 per page. It contains sections like “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Superheroes”, and “Nerdery of all types”.

Now, as I am also a total nerd, I enjoyed every single bit of this book — but be forewarned, it is not like the standard Sheldon collections where you get story arc after story arc merging together. It is more like Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos in that it collects all of the comics on this particular topic and puts them together.

So this book is light on the story arcs. (Pugs was, surprisingly, not as light.)

But you’ll still laugh your tail off.

And if you’re new to the comic, or just want some light humor without lots of plot, this is a great read.

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Drive, Act 2 by Dave Kellett

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Welp, that didn’t take long.

Drive Act Two is (obviously) the continuation of Drive, Act One, which I reviewed earlier today… because I inhaled both books today.

The second act of this story is as intoxicating as the first, filled with aliens and worlds beyond ours, introducing new characters and new twists and turns to the plot line at every convenience. The pacing continues to be spot-on. The art continues to be polished and delightful. The situation for our cast of characters continues to worsen, which, I mean sure, act 2, that’s it’s job.

I’ve reached the point in the story where even if I tried to explain the plot to the reader, it would take longer than actually reading the book. Plus I’d mess it up. Suffice it to say that I look forward to Act 3 with great admiration for Dave Kellett’s writing and a sincere desire to see how this all wraps up.

Or whether it does wrap up. There’s no law against a five-act space opera.

This isn’t one you’re going to find on Amazon. Buy directly from the Drive store in hardback, paperback, or PDF.

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Drive, Act 1 by Dave Kellett

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

I fell in love with Dave Kellet’s art and storytelling style with his strip Sheldon, a long long time ago when I had the time to read daily comics. I can remember when Drive launched.

But then life happened and I never got back to it.

This was a tactical error on my part.

Drive is a delicious mix of humor and heartbreak, a grandmotherly taking-no-crap human captain, two other humans that are in La Familia (the government) and all kinds of other aliens. The most important of the aliens are a Russian-accented Veeta the size of a rhino, and a tiny we-don’t-know-what named Skitter.

The thesis underpinning the story is that Skitter could conceivably save the human race and their empire by becoming pilots in their military. But there are mafias, planets full of dumb bullies, a parasitic-virus-based race spreading through the galaxy, a very very pissed-off group of aliens looking to regain stolen tech, and, well, space to deal with.

This book is the first act of the story. You will not want to read it without also getting your hands on the second act, which is now also available.

(Well, I mean, you could, but you’ll be like WHYYYYYY)

The art is fantastic, the storyline paced well for such a long arc, the switching of points-of-view to different places and times used to great effectiveness. The story is occasionally interrupted with important notes, historical elements, pages from an encyclopedia, and foreshadowing.

Oh the foreshadowing.

I inhaled this book in less than a day and as soon as I am done this review I’m starting Act 2.

This isn’t one you’re going to find on Amazon. Buy directly from the Drive store in hardback, paperback, or PDF.

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Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos by Dave Kellett

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos is a collection of all Dave Kellett’s Sheldon comics that involve the pug, Oso.

It is clear that Dave owns pugs of his own because nobody who’s not lived with the little beasties would be able to describe them visually and verbally as well as he does.

It’s also clear that you don’t have to be a pug owner (or even a pug-liker, although I think they’re pretty cool) to like this book. As always, Dave writes heartwarming and hilarious stories about Oso, his humans, their talking duck, and the lizard.

Note: normally I’d send you to the publisher, Topatoco, to order this, but they appear to be out. (I got it through a Kickstarter.)