Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82630 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 212 pages

About the Author
Dave Coverly was the recipient of the Best Newspaper Panel of the Year in 1995 and 2003 by the National Cartoonists Society. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Customer Reviews

The next best thing to The Far Side
Speed Bump is the next best thing to The Far Side - it is one of those smart and funny comics that make you think and laugh all at the same time. If you're the kind of person that cuts out comics and sticks them up at the office, this is your type of comic.

Coverly has the book broken up into themes and has a little introduction (one written by Rick Kirkman, the guy who draws "Baby Blues.") These are all clever (especially the one in which he describes a typical cartoonist's day).

Well, you'll have to excuse me now, I'm off to the scanner to make a few copies of some cartoons for the office!

Funniest Book I've Read in a Long While
Dave Coverly is one of the most underrated cartoonists out there. I competely agree with the previous review, in that he shares the same creative writing style as Larson, but his illustrations are superior.

The puns are numerous and outrageous... and will have you actually laughing out loud. Dave's brilliant artwork fits the subject matter perfectly. I have a number of comic collections in my library and this one now resides in my favorites section. Do yourself a favor and pick this book up. Better yet, call your local paper and demand that they run Speed Bump.

The true heir to Gary Larson
Are you a fan of "The Far Side?" Do you wish that Gary Larson was still doing that comic? I'm sad that he's gone too, but he sure produced a host of people to carry the load. Some have nowhere near the amount of imagination that Larson did, but one person definitely does. That's Dave Coverly, author of "Speed Bump." I just read through one of his latest collections, called Just One %$#@ Speed Bump After Another... and it's yet another winner.

Coverly is the closest I have seen to Larson's creativity in the one-panel (or sometimes small multi-panel) comic strip, bringing his characters to life and making wonderful jokes. Sometimes, Coverly will take a familiar phrase, and give it just one twist to the left to make you laugh out loud (such as one comic in this book where one baby sitting on a park bench tells another baby not to worry. "We *all* get thrown out with the bathwater from time to time.") Other panels have plays on words that sometimes make you groan, but always make you laugh (the head of a thesaurus publishing company telling an employee "Bob, you're fired, axed, canned, sacked, booted, dismissed, terminated and let go.")

This is the first collection I've read, so I don't know if the layout's the same in all of them, but this one is divided into sections regarding children, animals, gender differences in society, work, the meaning of life, and then a hodge-podge of unrelated subjects. The jokes are always clever, pop culture references abound ("Diane's date with a Headline News Anchor: 'Weird...didn't we just have this conversation half an hour ago, Tom?'") and even the introductions to the chapters are quite witty. The chapter regarding workplace comics begins with him describing a typical day on the comic creation assembly line, catching a bus with some lesser cartoonists while some (like Scott Adams) drive by in limos. Coverly doesn't avoid philosophy either, with one panel having God tell an angel "C'mon, it'll be fun! I'll throw on some stars, pop in a few planets, drum up a life form or two, and this place will be hoppin'!" The caption is, of course, "The Big Shebang Theory."

As for the artwork, Coverly's work is quite distinctive. He doesn't have any set "characters" like Larson did; instead all of them look quite different. Some have big noses that jut from their faces, while others have little ones. The eyes are different, heck even the body shapes are quite unique. Even the inevitable James Earl Jones comic (you can probably guess along what lines it runs) actually has him look vaguely like James Earl Jones!

This is a great collection of strips from the last couple of years. It was published in late 2005, and contains the winner of last book's caption contest, where you get to write the punchline! This year's deadline was April 7, 2006, so I missed it, but the winner will appear in the newspaper sometime during the year. "Speed Bump" is one of the funniest one-panel comics around these days, and Gary Larson's legacy is well in hand. Pick this one up today.