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

I’m the person that loves a good pun, cheesy joke or visual gag and this book has all of that and more. I’m always impressed when someone with one well honed talent shows up with another talent and Tommy Siegel has established himself not just as a musician but as an artist and comic. I also really liked the font used in this book, it felt clean and calming, so hey, I guess this book did help! Great read when you just need something light and laugh out loud funny.

So this was a compilation of cartoons for adults. Absolutely hilarious, but I would not want my middle schoolers reading it. It is very much centered around adulthood and how much it sucks, which is 100% accurate.

Some of it was really funny, but in general I thought the type of humour was not for me, so I ended up not finishing the book. Maybe it was too sarcastic for me, but it was also quite niche. I didn't get some of the jokes, others I just thought were not interesting or smart enough to be in a book. And there is a lot about being a musician, and general pop culture, when the book is marketed more as a comic about anxiety in the 21st century. Yes, there are things about climate change and internet addiction, but if those topics are supposedly the back bone of the book, I felt they weren't exploited enough.

Maybe if you're familiar with the artist already, or if you are interested in jokes about being a musician or "millennial culture", then you may really enjoy it.

I also felt the structure of the book was a bit all over the place. There wasn't a clear progression.

I have a few things I'd like to say about this book.
I tend to enjoy comics and graphic novels, and yet... this was not quite the case.

I'll start with the positive things I'd like to highlight:
- the drawings, I gotta say I actually enjoyed the drawing a lot. Can't stress this enough.
- I found the format of this book quite interesting. It's the first time I read a graphic novel with such a present author, this was achieved through the introductions to some of the parts of the book. It felt like the author wanted to make sure the reader understood the references to the world he was presenting, or rather to HIS perspective of the world.
- I had a good laugh with some of the cartoons.

The negative side:
- it wasn't my cup of tea. That's all, that's why I didn't enjoy it, actually.

“Social media hellscape” is an apt way to describe the author’s perception of social media, as he’s described and drawn in this book. “I Hope This Helps” by Tommy Siegel is a peek into the life of the author, whom has an uncanny knack of understanding millennial angst, vastly driven by social media. I appreciate the author’s self-deprecating humor and honesty about his social media/phone obsession and how he was able to turn that into these comics. There were many chuckles, a few laugh out loud moments while reading this book, and also a few thoughts of “how is he reading my mind?”

I enjoyed learning about the author’s process of how he started drawing again and his 'one comic a day for 500 days' challenge. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the Sunday comics, and this was a great trip down memory lane. This book is worth reading if you enjoy comics, commentary on social media, and/or laughing at someone else’s angst (or your own).

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I Hope This Helps is the result of a challenge, long drawing hours and an incredible sense of humor. I had already seen some of these in different social media, so I was really happy to hear about a book collecting them. The idea of mixing the comics with a little bit of narration was a very good one as well, because the author knows he's got a good story to tell and sometimes these kind of sketches are not enough for that. It also helps with the pace.

The first questions everyone asks when in front of a sketch collection is the type of humor they'll find. In I Hope This Helps, the humor changes from plain absurd to highly political (even if sometimes that is not what the author wanted, as he himself explains), to really well thought language-related sketches, to... well, birbs and butts. And, even if I'm not really keen on butt-humor (and never thought this would be a phrase I'd write on a book review), I must confess that some of the b-sketches are... inspired. Kudos to you, sir.
The rest, they are a mixture of painfully real situations, scenarios where you find yourself very represented and they sometimes hit extremely close, something I think is a huge success and somehow balances the book as a whole.

(Millenials realize that they are laughing about stuff they may be shouldn't but that's our way of not having time to realize the world around us is on fire)
And yes, hands are weird.

I highly recommend 'I hope this helps' to anyone who needs to leave the phone unattended for a while and does not mind getting face to face with an unapologetic gallery of, among others, jokes about millenials, classifications and... rear ends.
I think I'm going to follow the very wise advice from 'power of positive self-image', by the way.

***ARC by Netgalley. I really appreciate it.

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I Hope This Helps was born of Tommy Siegel's idea to create 500 cartoons in 500 days. He posted his drawings to several social media sites each day, and at the end of it, decided to create a book featuring a collection of the best of these comics, as well as a few essays detailing his experience creating these comics.

My favorite part of the book were the parts where he told us how the process worked. The comics were hit and miss for me. A few genuinely made me laugh, several made me smile, and some left me scratching my head. That said, I expect he will continue to grow as an artist as he goes, and I look forward to see what he comes out with in the future.

In response to the title of Tommy Siegel's first published comic collection, I want to say - yes, yes this helps. This helps very much. His combination of absurdist humor combined with witty observations of the absurdity of present-day living make this book both a great laugh-packed distraction and also a source of great relief thanks to the clever relatability that can be found on nearly every wonderfully ridiculous page.

This was really funny! I laughed, snorted, chuckled, and nodded in solidarity all the way through it. Of course some of the comics were funnier than others—that’s par for the course with humor.

I didn’t mind the brief essay sections. They slowed the reading a bit, but were interesting and relatable, if a little repetitive. I, too, have wrestled with the question of how social media is adding to my life or hurting it, and how it’s affecting our society as a whole.

Overall, I rate this book 4 Gary Larsons out of 5.




https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3516514387

3.5-4

slight t/w: mention of depression
i've been super burnt out & busy, but this collection of doodles/comics was incredibly refreshing in a way.
i thought tommy siegel's work was very original. i liked how it was composed of doodles/comics that reflect millenial culture, everyday anxieties, & intense social media consumption. i liked how siegel also took the time to explain some of the doodles & his process with drawing 500 doodles/comics while being a musician. it allows the reader to understand the creator & their work better which i appreciated. i do wish it was a bit longer & there were more doodles/comics incorporated because i felt like the text to doodle/comic ratio was a bit off, but that could just be me. overall, 'i hope this helps' really did help.

**I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

This was a fun and easy read. The author goes into detail about how drew comics for 500 days in a row. He talks about the joys and the hardships of doing this. He is also a musician so he will at times contrast the art forms. The book is mainly the best comics (in the author's opinion) from the 500 days. Some of them are funny, some are related, and some just plain weird. There are also some sections of long text that at times was relatable and at others went waaaaaaay too far down the rabbit hole of social media and what it is doing to our society. Overall, an entertaining, quick read.

I Hope This Helps is a comic series focused on the absurd parts of life and anxiety. Created by Tommy Siegel, it's marketed as being the perfect escape from a world that has gotten far too real.

I'm going to be completely honest with you here: I think I would have liked this graphic novel more had the title and marketing been different. The title (and description) led me to believe that it was going to be a funny, quirky, and uplifting series of comics.

It wasn't. Sure, it was funny at times, and that's why I refuse to rate it lower than three stars, well, that and the artwork. But it also got pretty dark. Nothing about the jokes or comics in this would be defined as helping.

This comic series takes the time to make many comparisons between different generations, but mostly younger and older millennials. There are some good laughs to be found here, especially if you have a good sense of humor about yourself or the whole situation.

In short, I Hope This Help has a unique sense of humor, and is worth the read. Just don't go into it expecting it to actually try to help. The goal is to make people laugh, but not in the most expected ways possible.

I really enjoyed this book!

I had not heard of Tommy Siegel before picking this book up but the blurb intrigued me and I wanted to give it a go – and I read it over a few days reading a few chapters here and there and I thought that it was great!

The images were brilliant and I loved the commentary and reasoning behind how the book came to being. It was a book I was happy to dip in and out of too and I found it to be really enjoyable, and most of all entertaining.

It is 4 stars from me for this one – highly recommended!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free via Netgalley.com.

I was scrolling through the library of available humour books on Netgalley.com looking for something funny to read, and thus review.

The premise of the book: a personal challenge to create 500 cartoons in 500 days. The completed book displays many of these cartoons and discusses the challenges of modern media (AKA our addiction to social media), being in a band and other humourous and timely topics.

I really enjoyed the stories and the cartoons that were displayed. Many of them were funny and some were thought provoking. This is a little over 200 pages packed with 2020 relevant topics and cartoons. While it was a humour book, it was nice to know that other people have the same anxieties as I do.

My favourite page was titled "What your coffee preparation method says about you". #IHopeThisHelps

**I received an e-ARC from NetGalley for an honest review**

As someone who used to struggle with staying off of Facebook and instagram, the reasoning behind creating this book really resonated with me, so I was excited when I got a chance to review this book.

Overall, the art style was enjoyable, and most of the comics were relatable. I do wish there was more art and less text, but "I Hope This Helps" gets a solid four out of five stars.

***Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***

This was a very relatable book. Filled with humor and wit.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

I really enjoyed this comic. My only complaint is that I wanted more of the comics and less of the text, but I really liked it. The comics are definitely geared towards older teens and up, so don't recommend this book to younger readers.

This is a very cute, clever book for a quick pick-me-up throughout the day.
You could flip to any page and find something to smile about. Very relatable to someone with anxiety.
I did find that some of the ideas got a bit repetitive and although the author explains why that is, I think a few of the sketches could have been cut.
Enjoyable coffee table book or good for a gift.

I DNF'd the book at 47%

I really liked the idea behind this book, I just wished I liked the actual book more than I did. I feel like the author was trying a tad too hard to be relatable. Though the graphics are a bit silly, a lot of the context wasn't all that funny or as relatable as the synopsis suggests.

Another thing about that book blub is that is states that this is a "must-read for comic lovers of all ages and backgrounds", I would not say that's exactly right there is some definitely rated content in there that isn't exactly suitable for kids under 12.

All in all, I'm grateful to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!