Published: August 20, 2013
Publisher: Image Comics
Genre(s): Graphic Novel
Format: Trade Paperback
Length: 96 pages

Todd, The Ugliest Kid on Earth is an odd little series about a kid named Todd surrounded by terrible human beings. It’s not exactly surreal, but it is nonsensical in a way that is clearly meant as darkly comedic but mostly just feels sloppy. The main character, Todd, is a little boy who wears a bag over his head at all times because, we assume, he is incredibly ugly.

In this volume, Todd gets in trouble with the police when a child-murderer decides he’s too ugly to kill and gives him dolls (evidence) instead. A gung-ho police detective arrests Todd on the basis of this “evidence” and immediately puts him in prison with a bunch of hardened criminals… because that totally makes sense, right? Todd is a sweet little kid who likes chasing butterflies and now he’s in prison dealing with the Aryan Brotherhood. Comedy! Todd makes friends, learns about prison life, and narrowly avoids terrible harm on every other page.

This book, pitched as comedy, mostly just seems unpleasant and cruel. Almost all the adults in Todd’s life are uniformly awful; the only adult who isn’t terrible to him is another prisoner who kills one man and carves “snitch” in another’s forehead. The joke, see, is that Todd is so nice and everyone else is so awful.

The writing tends to forgo logic or believability in the name of “satire”. Characters behave in completely ridiculous, unbelievable ways for the sake of comedy. The author puts Todd in terrible situations because I guess it’s funny to see a nice, oblivious little kid get mistreated.

As for the art style, it’s certainly distinctive, but it mostly seems designed to emphasize the ugliness of the various characters. I guess that’s also part of the joke: Todd might be ugly under that bag, but we see nothing but ugliness and hate around him, so he obviously isn’t that bad.

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley.

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