The Details

120 Days of Simon

Simon Gärdenfors, Top Shelf, $15

The rules were simple: Swedish rapper Simon Gärdenfors would spend four months hobo-ing about the country, staying mainly with strangers who signed up to host him over the Internet, and never staying in any one place longer than two nights.

Why? To make a comic book of his experiences, which ended up mostly involving drinking, doing drugs and having as much sex as possible (despite being on the cusp of a relationship right before the start of his odyssey/bacchanal).

Gärdenfors’ art is accomplished, but kids-book simple, characters consisting of only a few simple shapes, and each as cute as a button. That lends his book great deal of charm, despite the fact that Gärdenfors isn’t always the most sympathetic character. In fact, he can be a bit of jerk—in one of the book’s more effective running gags, various characters ask him to promise not to put the scene that one’s currently reading into the eventual book.