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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.