Review by Tony Keen
In 2003 Jeph Jacques was stuck in a horrible office job. Desperate for a creative outlet, he began drawing a webcomic, Questionable Content. It originally appeared twice a week, then three times a week, and then from later 2004, every weekday, as the strip and associated merchandise become Jacques’ full-time occupation. It has since become one of the more famous webcomics. This volume (of which a second edition appeared in 2017, with only minor differences) collects the strip’s first couple of years, missing guest strips Jacques would run when circumstances prevented him producing the scheduled episode. Also omitted are the first of the turkey comics that Jacques posts every Thanksgiving. Bonuses are a mini-comic from 2004, and 2010 commentary on all strips, while one strip posted in black-and-white because Jacques didn’t have time to colour it, finally gets a colour version.
Jacques would be the first to admit how crudely drawn these early strips are. This is particularly emphasised as he was unable to find the original high-resolution files for nine strips, and so redrew them in his 2010 style, which is remarkably different, and much more sophisticated, although still some distance from the style he employs now. For comparison, Jacques also includes the low-res versions of the strips concerned. By the end of the strips covered here, Jacques’ cartooning has progressed by leaps and bounds, yet even so, it’s still basic (see sample image).
What makes this worth paying attention to is Jacques very rapidly demonstrating mastery of scripting four or five-panel comics. Right from the very start, the jokes are good, and this is reinforced by some excellent characterisation. It’s a slice-of-life story about a group of twenty-something indie kids living in Northampton, Massachusetts, and there’s a clear influence of the likes of Jaime Hernandez and Alison Bechdel (though Jacques isn’t as good as either).
The initial cast is Marten Reed, who is fed up with his dead-end job, and his small robot companion Pintsize. The presence of an AI is something that would eventually become very important to Questionable Content, but for the moment is taken no further than having Pintsize as a foul-mouthed foil for Marten. Quickly the cast expands to include Marten’s friend Steve; Faye, a girl to whom Marten is attracted who instead becomes his flatmate; Dory, Faye’s boss at the coffee shop who has a thing for Marten; Jimbo the redneck construction worker (who we later find out writes romance novels), and characters that don’t stick around long, such as Sara, the coffee-shop barista who also has a thing for Marten. They’re well-rounded, with lives that you can imagine continuing off the panels. Jacques is clearly still feeling his way (it takes ages, for instance, for one of his strips to pass the Bechdel test), but he is heading in the right direction.
Volume 1 isn’t the best collection of Questionable Content as stories and art improve considerably later on, but it’s a pretty good start.