The Tragedy Series by Benjamin Dewey is a series of poignant and amusing one panel comics illustrating unlikely tragedies. I’ve described it at times as a Victorian The Far Side and in the same vein as the comics of Charles Addams. Painterly sepia-toned vignettes illustrate old fashioned characters in absurd situations. Part of the charm of the series is that you can imagine finding them in the corner of some Victorian magazine or newspaper, or faded clippings tucked into your Great-Grandmother’s recipe box in the attic. The author keeps in character as a verbose Victorian gentleman giving these friendly “It can happen to you!” warnings in his comments, and he uses the tumblr format to keep the presentation of the website simple. He also uses the tumblr tags to great effect, sneaking in a little extra description of the situation into the tags section. The author kindly includes “Sadness Reprieves” should the tragedy begin to weigh on you and these are sweet, happy, and always heart-warming.
The Author and his Other Works
Benjamin Dewey is a professional freelance comic artist, illustrator and musician out of Portland, Oregon and Periscope Studio. He’s worked on projects for Marvel, IDW, and Dark Horse, as well as an excellent but sadly departed fantasy webcomic called Tales of the White Pony. Some of its remains can be seen with even see more samples of his work at his online portfolio here. Many of the tragedies are available as prints in Dewey’s web store on Etsy.
Note from Jeanette: I’ll be taking a brief break from Wednesday’s webcomic next week, for a vacation and to read more archives. I want to be sure I read an entire library before I recommend a comic and I need to add more comics to my line up. If you have a recommendation, please send it to jeanette.diaz@gonnageek.com! You can expect the next installment on July the Third. Please enjoy this Sadness Reprieve to console you in my absence:
