asdf book review

By Clive Python | 14jammar

Okay, so it's Christmas 2015 and for some reason or another you receive a book called Art is Dead: the asdf book, "woah mama" you think to yourself, you can't believe that they really made an asdf book, out of all the things in the world that they could have made, they made a book based on asdfmovie, ten randum flash movies directed by Thomas Ridgewell from 2008 all the way up to 2017.

Now, I'll admit it, I'm quite the fan of Eddsworld and asdf, but the book for me just fell flat, one of the biggest drawbacks to the book is that it is shit. None of the jokes are funny at all and to top it all off, most of the jokes are just from the asdfmovies but made even less funny. It's amazing how people find the book to be funny, but somehow this book gets five-star ratings on websites like Amazon and Goodreads. The whole asdf book for me seems to be a giant inside joke that someone who has seen asdf would only get, but the thing is that I have seen asdf, so why don't I find it funny?


A panel from the book

I think I may have the answer to my question here; I don't find the book funny because I'm not a kid. I know it's old hat saying that someone's viewers (especially on YouTube) are children, but a lot of asdf fans seem to be kids on the Internet who somehow got the book. What's my point here? Well, kids are dumb and find dumb things funny, trust me, everyone was dumb at one point in their life, even a god like myself was dumb once - and when I was young, I found dumb things really funny and I bet if I was ten, I would find this book hilarious.

What I found sad about the book is that one of the only good parts to it is the introduction, where it tells us the history of asdf and how it has changed over the years, honestly, if the whole book was like that I probably wouldn't be bitching on the Internet.

What I don't like about the book;

  • A large portion of the comics are ripped straight off asdfmovie
  • Rather than expanding on a certain comic skit, the book restricts itself to only three panels. While this may work for other comic books, asdf suffers as a result of this.
  • The shape of the book is just bizarre, Tom himself even brings this up in the promo video
  • Most of the characters in the book have a bored and disinterested look to them
  • The book lacks any real colour to it, in total there are only three colours used in the whole book; red, black and white
  • The book has an ongoing joke of a character saying "what a twist", which is a fucking meme. Come on, Tom.
  • The whole book has an air of edginess to it
  • I know it is very subjective, but the humour for me just falls flat on its arse

What I think the book can inprove on;

  • A longer introduction explaining how Tom got his foot in animation and comic making (i.e. fucking talk about Eddsworld)
  • Examples of Tom's own comics
  • A normal book shape
  • Add more colour to the book
  • Use more original comic ideas that aren't ripped from asdfmovie

What the book did well;

  • The price, £9.99p, isn't all that bad for what you get
  • It's a hardback, so that's good 'n' all
  • The book feels well made and not at all cheap

I would whole heartedly not recommend the book to anyone over the age of 12 and even then I would say the book is not suitable for children that age, so at the end of the day I guess I'm saying that I recommend the book to no-one. Which is a shame, as TomSka seems to be a nice guy, well, he seems to be, for all we know he may be an axe crazed murderer. Or not. Probably not. Hopefully not.

If you want a good book by some Internet dweller, I would recommend the xkcd book: What If?

References

I.
Art is Dead: The asdf Book
https://surl.neocities.org/15.htm

Written by Clive "James" Python, 07/08/2017.

https://owlman.neocities.org/library/asdfbook.html https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://owlman.neocities.org/library/asdfbook.html*

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