Road Crew

I discovered Tommie Kelly's Road Crew quite by chance through a stray tweet on Twitter (every time I type that, I feel like a traitor to my original anti-Twitter stance... but like most such diversions, it's merely a question of finding out how best to use them for your own nefarious ends). I see a lot of online comics, many that are worthy of my attention, but it's not often I'm immediately driven to part with good money for an old-fashioned paper & print version. Not every comic is for every person, but as soon as I read a few episodes online, I knew Road Crew was the book for me.

Road Crew tells the adventures of Jim Soundman, a roadie and soundman-for-hire who gets the shitty backstage jobs at the arse end of the otherwise glamorous world of rock 'n' roll. It started out as a 3 / 4 panel strip but Tommie quickly developed it into full comic pages, usually posting one page a day. It's irreverent and funny and gets more dramatic and real as it goes along. One minute Jim is arguing with promoters, the next he's arguing with the devil in hell, the next he's arguing with his ex-girlfriend who wants to join the crew. There's a lot of arguing in Jim Soundman's life... hence what I said about 'real'.

The first Road Crew collection, Electric Ladyland shows real evolution, both in artwork and scripting, but it only takes a flick through some of the later strips online to see just how much Tommie's storytelling has matured. It's reminiscent of the way Dave Sim's early Cerebus changed from being a pretty straightforward funny animal Conan spoof to something far deeper and more satisfying... now if only Tommie can resist the urge to follow Sim into complete barking, batshit insanity, a bright future awaits him.

Click here to start sampling the delights of Road Crew now.