Books like Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff

An ostentatiously presented tome dedicated to the worst comic strip ever denotes the end of publishing and the climax of human achievement.With its embossed, gold foil-stamped cover, top-quality glossy paper, and impeccable attention to detail, it’s clear that no expense was spared in making Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. It feels good in your hands: a true work of art, a collector’s dream.But then you notice something wrong. There’s a stain on the cover. And it is there on purpose. It’s a coffee ring printed onto the cover with gloss laminate.This book, the debut effort by cult cartoonist Dave Strider, was realized with the help of a dedicated team of experienced artists. KC Green (gunshowcomic.com), John Keogh (lucid-tv.com), and David Malki ! (wondermark.com) served as designers. Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie (mspaintadventures.com) served as consultant.Since the days of Gutenberg, publishers have tried to marry form with content in pleasing and impressive ways. And while there have been fancy books, and there have been bad books, never before in the history of the codex have the two been mismatched in so dramatic and pointless a fashion. Like a wrench torquing a bolt too hard and shearing off its head, so too does Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff completely and irrevocably break the notion of the printed book.The online comic strip “Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff” follows a handful of friends who get up to nonsensical hijinks. This is in the rare cases when it makes any sense at all. It is universally acknowledged as the worst comic strip ever created.The book Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff lavishly presents the comic’s entire run in a treatment worthy of the highest masters of the form. It contains a completely gratuitous 4-page centerfold reading simply “centaurfold” in bright pink type.Scattered throughout the book are perforated business-reply cards taking the form of irredeemable Subway coupons (a first for comic strip collections). Each copy of the book also comes with a “travel version” (a removable poster of all the book’s pages in grid format); a custom commemorative coin (randomly chosen from 4 designs struck); an oversized plastic paperclip imprinted with the word “paperclop”; and an animated lenticular bookmark. Bound into the spine is a red ribbon approximately three feet long, and if you scratch the nacho chip sticker on the back cover, it smells faintly of pizza. (The hologram sticker of Tony Hawk smells only of chemicals.)