Beaver and Steve v1: A Shoeful of Trouble

Intro:
The first 121-odd (and some are very odd) editions of webcomic www.beaverandsteve.com, colored for the first time or recolored, plus three pages of previously unpublished strips.

Credits:
It’s all the fault of one James Turner. ISBN 0955287103.

Format:
112ish paperback, between manga and superhero trade sized, good quality paper although thin cardstock covers detract a little. Some pages are presented portrait, some landscape, which is annoying in constantly having to turn the book – although this is perhaps a necessity based on how the strips originally appeared online, a larger sized book would’ve allowed everything to appear portrait and aided the reading experience.

The Story:
Steve is a cute little dinosaur. Beaver is, well, a beaver. Together they encounter such entites as Emotibot (who wishes he were a real boy…then a beaver…), a violent turnip, Death without a sense of humor, Cyberspook, Hitler selling books…and these are just some of the more normal ones. Essentially a series of one or two page humor strips, these work best when a few strips are linked together, showing a potential interesting future of an ongoing strip. Individual strips are hit and miss, the hit quotient being quite high if you share the author’s sense of humor.

The Art:
Very cute, if a little basic. Nothing is allowed to clutter up the panels, it gets the job done. If Steve (the dinosaur) wasn’t so cute, the strip would suffer...but he is really, really cute. (I want one.)

And Finally…
This book suffers from the same problem other collected webstrips do – there’s not a lot here beyond what appears online. Megatokyo, for example, at least provides additional commentary and background on many pages, as well as a great deal of bonus material, and the real problem with Beaver and Steve is that you could the same content for free off the Beaver And Steve website - highly recommended to check out the website (look for the Archive link on the front page, near the bottom) for more strip samples, and if you enjoy what you see, order the book.