The book is clever and consists of original and redrawn comics from Siegel’s 500 day project. The essays are interesting, but what would be more enticing is a longer-form project from Siegel, even if it was only a few pages of continuous comic narrative within the book.

I discovered Tommy Siegel on Instagram when he started the "a comic a day for a year" challenge. I became obsessed with his style and humor. This book is just filled with his weird style, and is so much fun.

Ever need a hint of some modern day dark comedy? What about if it’s in quick comic form?

That’s this book. Very quick read, but really good. I loved the comic pages although the text ones weren’t really for me. But there are only a few of them so I made it through them without issue.

I’m fascinated by this 500 straight days of comics challenge and I’m amazed Tommy Siegel was able to do it (even if he says it broke his brain).

This is also very timely as there are even dark humor jokes about life during COVID. Some people may think this is too soon (we are still living it), but they are not in poor taste at all.

I do recommend for those who need a bit of a chuckle about our burning world.

I really enjoyed the collection of comics here. I didn't know anything about Siegel before reading this collection, but it was very good. The comics were funny, and so were the essays. As a cartoonist myself, I found myself enjoying how he depicted various aspects of life.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The humour was simultaneously juvenile (with the constant references to butts) while also being very astute and intelligent (the take on the performative nature of social media was genius).
If you are looking for a good chuckle and some interesting takes on our modern society and our dependence on our devices, you should look no further than I Hope This Helps.

I Hope This Helps is a helpful little book - if you need a laugh, to roll your eyes or snort and roll your eyes. It's filled with short comics of moments in life you recognize and that's, of course, where a lot of the humor lies. Siegel takes a view on every day life that we all know. He's there with us in all the ridiculousness, but also in questioning "What are we doing?"
A good combination of humor and thought provoking.

3.5/5

/ Denise

H/T to Netgalley and Andrews McMeel for the galley review copy.

Siegel is a renaissance man of his generation, and this book is a fruit of his illustrative journey, which began as a touring musician. "Helps" in the sense of the title is a relative conclusion, but as a peer of the author I do find solace in at least acknowledging the uncomfortable truths of modern life, with some chuckles and self-reflection also on offer.

I'm a little biased in my review, as I'm familiar with Tommy first from his band Jukebox the Ghost (love them) and then as an artist, when he started doing van doodles (he even did one of my requests - ask me about it sometime). I was really excited when I heard he was coming out with a book with all of his doodles.

I liked that this book had the story behind the cartoons and how they came to be. It was a nice addition to the comics, especially with Tommy's musings on how social media dictates everyones' life and his discussion on how his drawing skills grew over the course of the project. I will say that his emphasis on butts in some of the comics isn't necessarily my cup of tea. However, his commentary on other topics had me giggling.

I think I would mainly recommend this to friends my age but if you're into webcomics and some dark humor, this is the book for you.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
I was afraid this would not work for me as well as I'd hoped since I'm, um, a little older than a millenial. But this was hilarious! Loved it.

I Hope This Helps did help. It's not the best book I've ever read, but it's a light-hearted read during a time when people need more light-hearted reads. It is a book typical of this time. An artist with a social media following gets a book deal because of that following, then fills the book with social media posts. I'm getting tired of these social media books. However, this book was a pleasant distraction.

I hope this helps is a fun comic read of all things wack about the 21st century so far. I found it to be pretty good overall. Some of the comics had me laughing out loud, most were funny or said something that needs saying, and some I didn't think were particularly funny. I found the ones about rock music and musicians to be the most out of place. But I recommend it as a fun release from life which is a bit crazy at the moment.

My only complaint is the blurb in between sections of the book. The author talks about himself in a somewhat autobiographical way but it felt out of place and a bit navel-gazing-ish. Am I living under a rock? Because I've never heard of him or his band, I don't care about his music scene or what's been going on in his life... Without any desire to be mean to him, I just wasn't sure why that was there. An intro blurb about how he ended up creating these comics was great, but after that, I'm like, why do I care?

I expected this book to be ridiculously funny, but sadly, it didn't live to my expectation. It has a lot of references to things and situations either I don't know exists or I don't have enough knowledge to relate or have a strong opinion about.

This book was fantastic and hilarious. As a lover of both butts and comics, I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an affinity for either.

A good collection of comics. The art style is alright, even if the message in it self sometimes got a bit repetitive and old.
I like opinionated comic as much as the last one, but even so sometimes Tommy's ideas got a bit old fashionated even if its a "millennial" speaking.

I liked the style and a it of the anecdotes!

This one is a scribbling comics, maybe lets say doodle and random thoughts, collection reflecting on the day-to-day obsession (I say it's inevitable and inevitably visible everywhere) with the internet and hence with our gadgets especially the phones!

It's sarcastic at times.

It's funny.

It's eye-opening too.

The one thing that I couldn't like much about this collection was the interrupting long passages. I just didn't want to care. All I cared were the fun comics and the illustrations.

Damn. This one made my day.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

The results of a challenge the artist set for himself to make a cartoon a day for 500 days, the results of such a creative death march are unsurprisingly uneven (there's a big reliance on slightly biting 3x3 grid "what your sunglasses/coffee/car/pants say about you comics"), but there were some glorious descents into absurdity and humor. And he does show range from meme style to New Yorker dry wryness to over the top butt comics. I was less interested by the artist's reflections on his process and his love hate relationship with his phone and social media (and his social media bashing comics were the least interesting to me maybe because he's preaching to the choir - I fully believe and agree that social media is mostly being used to enhance anxiety, dread, and partisanship). Four stars because he did make me laugh several times and I needed the absurdity and wryness today.

I found this to be kind of monotonous. While I enjoyed some of the comics, many of them felt like the same idea/joke just framed slightly differently, and others I just didn't really get. I feel like I would probably get more enjoyment out of the comics individually if I were to see them while scrolling on social media (ironically enough), as opposed to having them all bound together in one book.

I read this book without any prior knowledge of the author or his art... which I usually think is a bonus because it cannot happen that I already know the majority of the work.
At first, I was enjoying the art quite a bit, but as I was getting more into the story, I was finding it hard and hard to keep my focus and interest.
And for me, the biggest downfall was the texts which sometimes accompanied the images. Mostly I thought that it did not add anything to the story.

My favourite part was all the comics which included candy hearts!

Overall, it was an okay read, but I cannot say that I would come back to read another book by this author. However, I have mad respect for the author to try to challenge himself to draw 500 comics in 500 days, one each day. I would be exhausted on day 5.

received an e-ARC from NetGalley for my honest review.

Siegel took up a challenge to draw 365 cartoons (which he then turned into a 500 day challenge). This book displays that process and showcases its results with the selections the author thought were best (though I question one or two selections).

I remember when many of these cartoons (especially the ones that went viral) first appeared on Twitter. Siegel admits that he tweaked some for the book, and most tweaked versions were an improvement. I found myself snorting aloud again at some and being sad I'd missed others the first go-around (Siegel explains why this can happen even with "followers" in his essay on social media algorithms).

The essays struck a chord because they seemed an echo of the debates I have with my husband, who believes that the internet is the worst thing to happen to society (while he is simultaneously glued to Facebook). I found it interesting to see the debate play out in the mind of one human instead of two.

I see several reviews complaining that "it didn't help"; "it was too cynical." Not everyone picks up on irony, so may have missed the world burning on the cover. I am going to compare this to how readers interact with Dickens: irony is lost on children, so they find the story boring (though children would probably get a giggle out of all the butts in Siegel); irony wounds teenagers and young adults, so they find it depressing; and adults find irony cathartic and laugh. If you haven't reached the level of maturity to appreciate Swiftian or Dickensian irony (and that's ok if you haven't), you're probably not going to like this book. But, if you look around the world as it stands at this moment in the summer of 2020 and laugh so you don't cry, this book will help you do that.

Unfortunately, I DNF'd this book at around 40% ....

I went into this book assuming it would be a fun and witty take on today's social media obsessed society, but unfortunately, it was a miss.
Other than a few comic strips that have a potential for becoming funny memes (like the Abbey Road one....), I just think the artist completely missed the mark on being funny and yet pertinent in the message I'm sure he wanted to pass on...

Also, I don't think this book is suited for "all ages and backgrounds", as it says in one of the book's blurbs, because there is several content that isn't appropriate for younger readers.

Overall, I was just very bored, didn't find it funny at all... In fact, it was more depressing than funny.
Had potential in it's premise, but was a miss for me.

I'd still like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

#IHopeThisHelps #NetGalley