Review: A Waste of Time #1

Twenty-something existential angst, anyone? In the shape of a fluffy rabbit talking about relationships, sex, politics, and being downbeat about it.
The first issue of Rick Worley’s A Waste of Time¹ made me laugh out loud more than once. His rabbit persona follows the time-honored tradition of animals being used as masks, and choosing a symbol of cuteness only to subvert it is probably the more revealing trick the author is using here.

What I especially liked about this collection of strips drawn over the last two years is the openness of the feelings and thoughts expressed here: it seems to me that for all his apparent cynicism, Worley wears his heart on his sleeve and can’t help looking like, well, a rabbit caught in the headlights, wondering “Is this really what the world is like? Is there no hope, no possibility of love?”
The redeeming feature of all this questioning is the self-deprecating humor present throughout the strips (“I hate the way I hate myself”), which seems to show that the author isn’t fooled by his own tendency toward self-pity (or, again, what seems like such a tendency).
The art is definitely of the less-is-more school, and the progress between the early strips from 2006 and the more recent ones is obvious: the line is more assured, the shading gives more consistence to this theater of the absurd. In a word, the newer strips are more convincing.
I hope Rick Worley will keep working with his little rabbit (that sounds vaguely dirty, doesn’t it?). We need more fluffy animals spouting obscenities and cursing politicians.