No likey! Not a graphic novel, it is a strip. Neurosis is not funny to me. That is all. ( )

The opening issue on TMCM vs Trademark Copyright Man is great, especially if it's literally the first appearance of TMCM. Because Wheeler published chapbooks and perhaps comics in city weeklies or such, it's unclear to me how much preceded these issues.

The "origin story" is fun, I especially like the misdirection as to who turns out to be TMCM.

I did not immediately identify the story arc of these issues, in which the cartoonist gets increasingly more successful, and Joel (the character who breaks up with his girlfriend and hangs out with another woman friend) gets correspondingly more abject. The last panel actually has Joel panhandling from the cartoonist, but it's a small enough image that it wasn't clear visually (and I, again, probably would have missed the allusion to him in dialogue). Wheeler makes it all clear in an editorial aside.

One or two episodes feature Too Much Coffee Woman, Too Much Espresso Guy, Underwater Guy ... but fewer than I would have thought. Maybe later issues?

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Compiles issues 1 - 8 (but see below).

Again without it being pointed out for me, I'd not have gotten the joke of the "missing" issues 6 & 7: Wheeler explains in a 1-page note, what did he do when released as individual issues? in issue 8. There are 1-panel "summaries" of the missing issues described via footnotes, but I would have interpreted those as real and wondered how I missed the actual issues. The 1-page explanation here would make for a fun poster or print.

The joke lived on; in an updated "catalogue of junk / summer 1997" was a listing of each issue, and notes "SOLD OUT" for numbers 6 & 7. ( )