Bag of Toast is like having a bum raving at you on the subway, minus the body odor. Either you find that sort of thing entertaining or you don’t.

See, while other comics are fiddling about with “stories” and “rational punchlines,” Bag of Toast is running amuck with bulletins straight from the id that often make no sense at all, like “Extremely hairy Roger says, ‘One day, I will be considered sexy again,’” combined with a bizarre image of what is indeed a very hairy man. And when they do make sense, they tend to be nonlinear – as with today’s strip, which has an ad with happy, naked people exhorting, “Genitalia! Bundles of fun for everyone! Squishy! Warm! Interconnecting! A fun part of emotional and reproductive health!”

Not to your tastes, you say? Well, it’s not to mine, either. I kept saying, “This is stupid. It makes no sense at all.”

Then my finger clicked the “next” button. My conscious mind didn’t want it, but the very nerves in my body had to see more.

Bag of Toast is filled with really nice art – the kind of purposely-crude, colorful stuff that’s hard to pull off, since just a hair too much chaos and it looks ugly. But thankfully, Jeff Cohen creates a pastel-filled world that’s just fun to look at, and all the while he constantly switches styles like the Perry Bible Fellowship.

As I said – it’s random. Perhaps too random at times, since it does feel like someone shouting strange things with a megaphone out into an empty universe just to see if anyone laughs. Some of the gags fall short because, well, they’re not really gags – they’re just strangeness set to paper.

But it’s such an airy, strangely-agreeable entertainment that you forgive anything that doesn’t fire in search of the next one that does. And many of ‘em do, not causing outright laughs but often making you tilt your head and grin a little.

As a reviewer, there’s not much to review here, because it’s a nonlinear sequence of oddities – a freakshow captured in fine drawing. What am I supposed to analyze? There are some forms of entertainment that all but defy critique. But what really comes across in Bag of Toast? It’s the joy. I may not want to sit next to Jeff Cohen on a bus, but I envision him giggling madly as he creates these strange little gems from the id. And having them sent to me quietly across my browser is like having my own private bum to dance for me whenever I see fit.

It’s good stuff.

(As always, if you have an underappreciated webcomic you think I should review, leave a comment and I’ll take a look at it. Reviews will be only for strips with less or equal traffic to the strip I co-created with Roni Pare, Home on the Strange, in order to highlight smaller comics; as such, the reviews will always be at least mostly positive. If you note any traffic I’ve sent your way and feel the urge to shower me with gratitude, feel free to plug HotS in your own comic. Danke!)

Tags: webcomic review

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