Love Is Hell - Matt Groening

I apologise to Katie for my title, but I'm sure she'll agree, love is hell. That's what this book goes into describing in a comical way. Furthermore, it's both funny and factual!! I can actually relate to the "9 types of boyfriend"

It goes through different areas of relationships. Each page is one in a series, presumibly printed on a newspaper weekly or something when drawn. But it's all collected together in this book.

It then moves into some sections of "Life in hell" which are more about children, having children etc.

Each page is like a seperate comic. It's a brilliant book to just pick up and read whenever you're bored. You can pick a page and look at the cartoons.

As some of you will know, I'm a complete geek, I love finding things I didn't know were there. There's so much packed into these comics that there's always something to look at, or notice or whatever. So I love it!

Despite being written in 1985, all the jokes are relevant now! I find this quite amazing that everything in it I can relate to.

Matt Groening is a fantastic artist. He's used bunny rabbits (which are already starting to resemble the simpsons characters) to convey the message that "love is hell". Including some observations on marriage, living together, different types of boyfriend and girlfriend, breakups, makeups. Each and every one as funny as the last and you can just relate to them.

It's not storytelling, there are no real storylines, it's just doodles all over the page. More of a collection of jokes than anything else

It's in black and white. Some, well quite a few, of the jokes are rude and could cause offense. It's certainly aimed at the 15 - 30 market. There's lots of adult humour involved.

I'm still trying to go through all the routes on the "your guide to modern love" flow diagram style page. There's hundreds of boxes and directions.

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Conclusion
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I hate comic books, I love this.

It's just a great comic style book to pick up, read a few pages and put down again. It's saved many of my most bored moments (along with ciao) :-)

I would recommend anyone feeling down about love, or anyone who just feels like a laugh to go and buy this book. It'll make you laugh, I promise!

Considering there are only 30 pages, the £5 asking price seems quite high. But for a comic of this calabre I don't think it is at all!

I bought this at borders, it should be sold at most book shops in the comic and cartoon section. I found it in the humour section. The official internet site has nothing more than a picture and 2 lines of text. So I would suggest having a look next time you're in a book shop to learn more.

ciao seem to think that this is a non-fiction book, degree of information etc. So please ignore these!