Minimum Wage Book One

Fingerman has the knack for identifying the humor in the weirdest and the most unexceptional people or situations. This first installment of Fingerman's crisply rendered mini-epic presents a couple of days in the life of Rob, paradoxically stuffy N.Y.C. slacker/artist and reluctant party-boy, who freelances for porn magazines while convincingly delivering the line ``You kiss your mother with that mouth?'' to his shoot-from-the-hip girlfriend Sylvia. Rob slouches along from Pork magazine headquarters to Brooklyn and beyond, sharing joints, drinks and woes with his baggy, sex-starved buds--prototypical loser-types all--along the way. The sneakily incisive Fingerman presents his characters in all their skewed, dweebish glory, from their often hilarious dialogue to the band-emblazoned T-shirts that they wear like ID tags. The graphics and overall atmosphere are distinct from such earlier work as White Like She; Minimum Wage has a clean, cartoony style that manages to be both light and cluttered in a manic, obsessive way, tight yet loose-limbed. His backgrounds are packed with layers of detail that, when decoded, provide further insights into an engaging and entertaining work that is dense with demented particulars. Drawings are in b&w. (Oct.)