Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People may not be for you… but don’t tell anyone. If anyone asks you loved them all and especially that one on page thirty-seven. Actually the idea behind Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People isn’t a new one. I don’t know if Matthew Diffee created the genre of “rejected New Yorker jokes”, but he’s definitely contributed to it. While this isn’t another collection of rejected comics it is similar, but it’s actually a collection of Diffee’s best material over the years. It’s strange to review, but here we go. The overall pacing of the books is nice. There’s theme breaks like “Medical Profession” and “Lumberjack” with everything else in-between. There’s no unity between the different themes, just humor and that’s all anyone can ask for. Occasionally Diffee will interject with his own thoughts and explanations of sorts and sometimes it works… other times you have to wonder if a few more pages of jokes would have been better.

The artwork is sharp, detailed and everything you’d expect from a well-polished cartoonist. Diffee has a very realistic style and keeps the panels looking clean yet detailed. The interjections occasionally look a little MAD Magazine-ish and by no means is that a slam. MAD has many talented artists and really aren’t New Yorker comics just highbrow MAD jokes? The good ones anyway.

Overall this book is good for a laugh which is great because that’s its intended purpose. I didn’t struggle to keep up with the jokes and several of them had me laughing out loud in the real sense of the meaning. Particularly the one on page thirty-seven. If you’ve read Diffee’s other collections or even the collections from fellow New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, then you’re sure to enjoy Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People.

Score: 4/5

Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People Writer/Artist/Creator: Matthew Diffee Publisher: Scribner Books Price: $22.00 Release Date: 5/12/15 Format: Hardcover; Print