The Book of Onions

Warning: The Book of Onions contains no onions at all. Instead it contains darkly humorous single page cartoons about life.

Have you ever wondered how Ronald McDonald got his job? Or whether kitchen matches are happy to be chosen for important jobs? Even if you have never had any curiosity whatsoever, I guarantee you will enjoy this madcap dive into the bleakness of life. I doubt you will soon forget the panda face of war. If war turns men into animals, you really do not want to know what it turns the animals into.

Laugh-out-loud moments make this the perfect waiting room read. Some of the themes are rather dark so the Book of Onions is not for children. However, for everyone else it is great. 4 stars!

Thanks to Andrews McMeel Publishing and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

This book had me in stitches. I absolutely loved it and will definitely be recommending it to my friends.

A very fun collection of webcomics. I'd seen way more of these strips than I'd realized, going in, and I think that there is definitely a good reason that they're so well-circulated. Not every strip lands, but those that do are pretty dang funny. The art also really works for me, which is weird because it is stylistically inconsistent, but is almost always done in a way that really helps the joke land.

The cartoons within are all 4 blocks and many were so so very hilarious, I was laughing throughout. Highly recommend.

Short cartoons of just four simple drawings make up this small book.
Filled with some classic laugh out load moments, care if reading on your morning commute or in the library.
I love nonsense humour, a little of that interspersed with wicked observation and literal interpretation of life. It has animal jokes, relationship humour, microbe and virus comedy as well as looking on the brighter side of life even if aliens turn up.
Each quartet of drawings have a distinctive hand in the clever illustrations with speech bubbles and comment with an under written title for the set.
I liked Okay, Steve? and with guilty pleasure "Laughter is the best medicine, Howard."
Stifling chortles I loved "Follow your dreams", "It's a metaphor" and "The power of the tinkle"
Creasing me up LOL, "Worth it" and "My main paranoia"
Stands up with a second read through; a great little coffee table book for people who don't have the room for a nest of tables or a centrepiece coffee table.
Laughter can be the best of medicines but not perhaps if your name is Howard.

Jake Thompson came up with some of the most outrageous off-the-wall weird and wacky comics. I didn't get past the first page without laughing out loud. Now how's that for an endorsement? My only complaint was that the comedy show ended too soon. Well done.

I extend my thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one!
On first look i was a little disappointed to find just four pictures per gag.
I judged too soon, four was enough, enough to make me laugh out loud through the majority of the book.
Funny, witty, clever,dark, and comical are just a few words that describe this book.

"If you was expecting and educational volume about vegetables i am sorry for wasting your time " even the intro was funny!
Its not possible to put it down once you've started , it draws you in and spits you out at the end!
Brilliant !

This curated selection collection from the webcomic "Jake Likes Onions" perfectly captures Jake Thompsons uniquely dark and absurdist sense of humor, making this a great time for both "Jake Likes Onions" fans and newcomers to his work.

A very funny, entertaining collection of cartoons. Simple, to the point, and sometimes just brilliant; Guaranteed to bring a smile (and some loud laughs too).

I received a copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Some of these jokes were hilarious.

I’d never heard of the webcomic <i>Jake Loves Onions</i>, but I enjoyed this book a lot.

I might not check out the webcomic - I liked this as a book; all the comics weren’t funny, so it was nice to skip over ones that weren’t funny, or were just amusing, to get to the really funny ones.

This dude has an odd sense of humor.

Recommended if you like to laugh.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

This comic book is one of those with single page jokes. So, what makes it different?

First of all, this isn't relatable comedy (the 'oh, we're so quirky!' kind), which means it's actually funny. This book's type of humor isn't conventional, it reminds me of the type of humor you'd find in reddit.

This book also doesn't try to tell small stories, it focuses on the jokes. However, it doesn't feel like the author is actively trying to be funny, he just is.

All in all, this was a fun read.

I don't know how such bleak comics can be so funny, but here we are... this is a collection of surreal comics that employ a dark humour to make you chuckle. The illustration style is plain and easy on the eye, which somehow makes everything funnier.

Can't go wrong with dark comedy. I actually laughed out loud a few times. I have seen a few of these comics posted on the internet. Four stars. Would definitely recommend to friends with equally dark senses of humor.

I hadn't heard of the Jake Likes Onions cartoons until I read this book. Entertained, though maybe not as much as regular fans. It was a little simplistic in my opinion. Good, but not great.

There is no onion in this book. I do not understand why onion is the title but it is okay, this is the reason why I chose to read it. The comic strips are funny, it's in a dark humor category. But, I enjoyed reading it.

I am seated next to a friend enduring chemo and we are both laughing like crazy. That tells you how amazing this book is.

A suitably dark, sarcastic and snide collection of four-panel comic yucks, and one that really works. They're not exactly quotable, as a lot of them are a very competent mixture of image and text, so you can't really cite them in a written review. But trust me they're a heck of a lot better than many other books that purport to offer single-page strip jokes. It's very child-unfriendly too, in that it's almost NSFW at times. But I'm certainly feeling friendly to it. Four and a half stars, for being clearly superior to many other alternatives.

The Book of Onions is grim and attempts to make light and some of our worst emotions. There are several times the comic succeeds; I laughed at the comic as it reminded me of my own times of loneliness. On a personal front, more struggled than landed. I was mostly amused but there were a few godo laughs.

When I was a kid, my dad had a couple of volumes of collections of The Far Side Gallery comics, and I... well, to be honest, when I first read them I was much too young to understand more than one in thirty of them, but eventually, I loved them. I was so envious of Gary Larson, and his ability to both draw and be funny at the same time, that I spent a significant amount of time in middle school pretending that I also had both those talents. (I very much did not.)
Fortunately for us, there are still some people who DO have both a quirky (some might say downright weird) sense of humor, and the skill to easily communicate it through a few well drawn panels and a short supply of words. One of those people is Jake Thompson, and his The Book of Onions, which is not, he assures readers from the first page, a cookbook or a story about actual vegetables, but is, instead, a modern day collection of off the wall comics, that echo the Galleries of my childhood in both style and substance.
I hadn't actually heard of Jake Likes Onions (the site the comics were originally published at), but, in reading the book, I realized I'd seen quite a few of the comics in other Interwebby places over the last few years. I had in fact saved this astonishing realistic portrait of me to my computer quite some time ago:
(Except I shower this hot even in the summer. Always hot showers. Always.)
It's a great collection of entertaining strips, and I'm gonna leave you with a couple more to prove my point.





Once again, my copy was supplied by NetGalley, in exchange for a review. Although, hey, here's an idea for NetGalley: Maybe make images sharable, if you want people to write reviews about books that have lots of pictures? I mean it wasn't too hard to figure out for webcomics, but it makes reviewing picture books a tad difficult sometimes.

Another collection of small-paneled no-continuation comic strips, usually featuring a round head in a suit. The artwork makes you laugh, and then the caption cranks it up another notch.
Right off the bat, the first page, “A Love Story for the Ages,” made me laugh. Good start.
Other faves:
Jogging! I’m on the side of the animals.
Revenge!
What do guitars have to do with capital punishment? Find out here!
“Tell me I’m beautiful.” That’s the second Mirror Mirror on the Wall joke I’ve read this month, and both were awesome.
Kleenex and gun-toting pandas, back to back.
So many more I could have mentioned, but had to draw the blurry line somewhere. Just go check it out for yourself.

What a hilarious, cynical comic! My full review appears on Weekend Notes. Thanks very much to the publishers for sharing this ARC.

Who does not love a book which can make one laugh from the very starting of the book. In this case, I meant the dedication of the book is so funny that it hints the humour inside of the book.

I chose this book seeing the cover and always have a knack for comics but did not expect such funny (weirdly and wackily funny) stripes to be there. The book contains no onions to make one cry rather than has some dark humorous comics to make the readers laugh. Jake Thompson did some outrageous and brilliant work.

You will be surprised how the only four gags per page can make you laugh so hard. Even the intro started with a funny note.

It's an unputdownable and perfect waiting room read for everybody. Very much eager to read 'Jake likes Onions' cartoon series by the same author after finishing this. If you are in a reading slump, this funny book can pull you out for sure.

ratings: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ (one less star because the book is short...I want a huge volume of those humour.)

4 panel strips with surprising, humorous and often dark endings. The illustrations style is detailed and adds to the humor of the strips.

I found these comics on Tumblr maybe a year ago, and they are absolutely batshit insane.

I'm serious.

But the thing is, they're hilarious. This is the kind of humor that makes you laugh even when you can't figure out why you're laughing. It's dark, and often morbid, but if you have just the right twisted humor, these are absolutely the comic for you.

I mean, he's not wrong about the cry crying part. Some of them are a little too true.

And for fans of his online artwork, I'm happy to report that there are a ton of comics he's not featured online, more than enough to justify the book.

I saw some of the comics on internet. I really liked author's darkly humour. Maybe it is not a good idea to read everything at once but i really enjoyed it.

I already like his comic series, "Jake Likes Onions" and I have some friends who follow him on social media. His darkly, absurd humor just easily makes me laugh. When I saw his book on Netgalley, I got so excited. The book is perfect for quick reading and it finished instantly. *sad face here* I absolutely loved it and I highly recommend.

One of cleverest, funniest, and most sadistic collections that I have ever read. Bravo. I have absolutely not criticisms.

If you've read Jake Likes Onions online, you know exactly what to expect from this book. Some of the comics have been released online already, but quite a few are brand new. Thompson's often acerbic, dark sense of humor in these short comics might not be for everyone, but if you enjoy it they are hilarious.

Embrace It, Jack

This is not a cookbook, although a book of onion-based delicacies does sound amazing. Rather, THE BOOK OF ONIONS is a collection of strips from the webcomic Jake Likes Onions by by Jake Thompson. Drawn in black and white with a four-panel convention, Thompson’s comics often veer toward the absurd and bizarre, with a wickedly dark sense of humor. They’re a little reminiscent of THE FAR SIDE, but more obscene (mostly in a good way). The never did get me crying quite like a fat, juicy onion, but they were good for a chuckle or two, and some of the especially bleak ones just may haunt my nightmares. (Jack, I’m looking at you.)

If you don’t follow Jake on twitter, what are you waiting for?

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

I freaking loved this book. I was laughing the whole way through. The art is really good but I definitely appreciate the dark humor the most.
From sexual bananas to theivi g universes this book has it all.

These cartoons are clever and made me smile. I had never heard of this cartoon artist before, but now I will look up his other work.

This collection of strip from a web comic has lots of laugh for my guy Josh, but it’s just not for me. It’s not my type of comedy. But the book moves smoothly and is well arranged. There are a few really funny, or at least shareable strips, but not a book I feel I need in my collection.

This graphic novel is another one of those funny/relatable comics that have been coming out recently.
It has several themes but what I liked the most were the random jokes that caught me off-guard.
I recommend it.

3.5 Stars

A delightfully morbid book of comics that speaks to the cynical and pessimistic. I can’t say I laughed out loud at anything, but did have a wry smile of satisfaction through the majority of the book. The synopsis of the book likens the comics to that of Gary Larson’s “The Far Side”, which I can totally understand and would back up that statement. The book is lightning quick to read, and each “gag” is only one-page long. So, easily something where you can make a photocopy of your favorite and hang it in your office.


Received via Netgalley. I have provided a truthful review of my own accord, and it reflects my opinion alone.

Funny and weird. This short read was pretty damn perfect. If you've read Jake's work online, which I'm sure you have if you're going to read this, then this is for you. Enjoyable. And weird.

Thompson's Book of Onions is a collection of one shot cartoons mostly focusing on the darkly humorous side of life. Other comics were simple absurd non sequiturs guaranteed to startle a laugh out of the reader. Like sexy bananas. I enjoyed the artwork. Some of it, and the humor, reminded me of The Far Side, and others called to mind the Non Sequitur comic, even though that one was only one panel and each of these is a four panel comic. I loved the disclaimer at the beginning too! Haha, priceless! "If you were expecting an educational volume about vegetables, then I am sorry for wasting your time..." Highly recommended! Great for a pick me up laugh. Perfect coffee table book.

***Many thanks to the Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thompson has a dark, cynical, wry sense of humor that hearkens back to Gary Larsen's time on The Far Side. I like the 4 panel construction and only wish the book had been longer.

A very amusing collection of easily accessible 4-panel webcomics with slight dark tinges and twists.

Unique, bizarre and entertaining. Certainly for a unique taste in humor. I enjoyed it. Not for all, but I enjoyed it.