As I stared at Kieffer’s Downtown Toronto #7, David Bowie’s Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed wafted out of my half-broken stereo, providing an eerily candid soundtrack to a mostly depressing comic about our hero’s ongoing fears and anxieties about life, ladies and– actually I think that’s it. Though Kieffer’s Downtown Toronto series has always been self-indulgent and let’s admit it, a little repetitive, Kieffer is so endearing and amusing that it’s hard to bring oneself to really care that he mentions ‘girls’, ‘women’, or ‘chicks’ nearly 15 times in the first ten pages. In fact, I really like that within his comics, he admits to seeing these possible flaws within his comics. It’s meta-fabulous! My only concern is that once Kieffer finds that elusive woman of his dreams, an absence of loneliness will spell an absence of Downtown Toronto installments. Thankfully though, crazy hoboes (the other main characters in his comics) are never in short supply, so I guess fans of JK can rest easy tonight. (Claudia Calabro)
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