I fell in love with Bob the Angry Flower on page 90, when he ranted against a handful of inane Presidential declarations and then forced George W. Bush into a hand-crafted rotating slapping machine. It was then that I knew that Notley and I were on the same wavelength, although his fascination with monster movies, borderline sociopathic dislike for stupid people and mixture of autobiographical strips with wildly fantastic ideas had already entertained me up to that point. Notley's strip has a biting sense of humor reminiscent of Keith Knight or Evan Dorkin, and the sources for his ideas are as varied as modern politics, cheesy Japanese monster movies and of course the realities of the comics industry.
First of all, though the lead character is Bob the Angry Flower, it wouldn't be too far off the mark to call this an autobiographical strip, at least in part. Notley's experiences and feelings are realized through Bob, who serves as a release valve for all those socially unacceptable impulses. You know, like the one that makes you want to murder 90% of the people around you 90% of the time. We all get that, right? Right?
Notley's creation is told in strip format, generally in six to eight panel one pagers, and while there are some stinkers thrown in, the results are generally funny and well-paced. On occasion, Notley goes off into randomness, creating a punchline that is just surreal, but for the most part, the weirdness of the book is background to the observations on culture. Notley's interests are many and varied, including science, movies and politics, and sometimes very specific, such as his love for Mecha-Godzilla or Sinistar. And part of the reason why Bob works is because of that element of surreal, as it allows Notley to create concepts like the Hitler talk show, or a pilot for the homosexual robot cop show, or trips to the bookcase dimension to buy bookcases, or any of the other odd things that fill this book (and, frighteningly, Notley's imagination.)
The artwork in the book is a mixed bag, done with a variety of tools and in varying states of deadline doom. While Notley can sometimes go all out and draw a realistic female form or fantastically imagined monster car (trust me, you've got to see it to believe it), for the most part, the work falls into the "gets the job done" category. That is to say, it's along the lines of what you'll see in your average strip, with great storytelling ability but not a lot of panels that will make you sit up and take notice, admiring their detail and workmanship as pieces of art in and of themselves.
Notley finishes out the book with a couple of nifty features. One is a catalog of Bob's weapons and devices, as examined by the U.N. Emergency Forces, which is downright hysterical. Another is a fairly dry but interesting explanation of Notley's research into being a "laser pilot," an odd combination of imagination and science that gives a window into how the cartoonist's mind works. And my favorite is a series of annotations that cover what he was thinking in various strips or provide cute and random comments on the strips. It's informative and fun, reminiscent of DVD commentary. Basically, Bob the Angry Flower is a whole lot of fun. I see myself tracking down the rest of the collections real soon now.
