True Stories #2 by Derf Backderf

True Stories #2 Reviews

• 
  Sam Quixote

  True Stories, Volume 2 collects more four-panel strips from Derf Backderf’s The City, time time from 2009 to 2014, when the comic ended. Like the first volume, they’re funny observational strips about everyday people Derf encounters.
  
  Filling this collection are religious eejits, crazy street people, gun nuts, someone literally knitting as she drives, a guy belting out the Underdog theme in public, and Pressure dude is back.
  
  Aside from one strip where Obama visits Derf’s town, Volume 2 feels just like the first volume which was set pre-Obama administration, so they’re largely timeless stories. And, also like the first volume, there’s an inordinate amount of strips bashing the morbidly obese. I get it, they’re an easy target and the strips are mostly amusing but Derf really seems to have a serious problem with fat people.
  
  True Stories, Volume 2 is another entertaining and humorous collection of regular people doing irregular things, captured forever by a fantastic cartoonist. Well worth checking out for fans of Derf Backderf or anyone looking for a pick-me-up on a low day!
• 
  Peacegal

  Great idea for a comic! The artist takes bizarre happenings in everyday life and puts them into 4-panel strips. It turns out public libraries are great repositories of bizarre behavior (gee, who'da thunk it?) I could create an entire comic collection this size each week.
• 
  Václav

  Vol2
  (1,8 of 5)
  A bit better than the previous volume, but still terrible.
• 
  Matt Graupman

  With “My Friend Dahmer,” “Trashed,” and “Kent State,” Derf Backderf has cemented his place in the upper echelon of modern graphic novelists so it’s kinda easy to forget that he got his start as one of those outsider cartoonists whose work used to appear in those alt-weekly newspapers you could get outside grocery stores and coffee shops and stuff. Backderf’s strip, “The City,” a quirky mix of true observations and satirical political jabs, was one of the more popular ones. “True Stories, Volume Two” collects - what else? - a handful of the true stories that ran in “The City.” An Ohioan from a Rust Belt wasteland, Backderf’s cartoons about dim-witted Midwestern rubes, oblivious misfits, and flat out sociopaths have a curious mixture of disdain and genuine neighborly fondness for their subjects. His art is a little rough compared to his more polished recent work but the angular comix-style aesthetic works well with the scrappiness of his characters (and make no mistake, these people may be real but they are most certainly characters). Good for a chuckle or ten, “True Stories, Volume Two” is an eye-opening foray into an America that is often overlooked by popular culture and elected officials alike. Backderf, for better or for worse, is their Jane Goodall.
• 
  Chad Jordahl

  I sympathize with Backderf's point of view. I like his Crumb-like art and droll spin on nutty everyday situations. But I found that reading these one-page comics back-to-back as a collection felt unsatisfying in some way. I think I'd appreciate them more in smaller portions spread out over a few days.
• 
  Canavan

  ✭✭✭½
• 
  Sherrie

  Another great True Stories volume with fantastic illustrations and hilarious dialogue.
• 
  Jack

  About half of these feel like posts from r/fatpeoplehate, but the other half are pretty amusing.