Originally called Jez Jerzy in Poland George the Hedgehog has been translated and released on comixology via the submit program. It’s a collection of short stories following the adventures of a skateboarding, smart mouthed, sex crazed hedgehog named George. Anytime you have a reoccurring character in short stories the challenge is to make them interesting and fun. It’s like a comedy skit; you have a short amount of time to make people laugh. Unfortunately I never laughed while reading George.
The first story was one of two tales that I actually enjoyed. It’s about a trucker that stops on the side of a road to visit with a prostitute and upon finishing his business he discovers his truck has been stolen. After dealing with the police and accepting the fact that he’s screwed, George appears and plays the helpful witness informing him that he saw where the truck was taken and will help for the price of 10% of everything on the truck. Well the truck only has booze, so yeah. The truck driver agrees and soon enough George has plenty of booze, the trucker has his truck back and who should make an appearance but the prostitute picking up her share from George.
As I said there was one other story I liked, but otherwise the rest of the tales are pretty generic. Basically whatever element is introduced is going to be the catalyst and ultimately the “mark” for George in that episode.
There was one story I didn’t like at all. It involves some Taliban looking dudes plotting to blow something up. Overall the story is pretty generic as they of course don’t have the money for the supplies. Meanwhile George is peeing in public and for some reason the dudes think that he’s the person that’s screwed them over on their bomb ordering. That’s fine and all as George hands them their asses, but then he brings the police to arrest them and the police call them men faggots. Their word not mine. It didn’t serve any purpose with the joke and was very out of place. There really seemed to be an intense hatred behind this word and it bothered me. I don’t know if that was part of the translation or if it was like that originally, but it was an instant turn off for me for the rest of the issue.
The art is decent. It has a MAD Magazine style to it which definitely works for short stories like this. I actually enjoyed the art a lot more than the stories themselves. Flipping back through it a second time for review I actually focused more on the artwork than anything else and it was a decent experience because of it.
Even putting aside the one story that bothered me I don’t think this is a successful short story series. It’s not terrible, but none of the stories pop or have the potential to make you laugh. If you just want something short to read and want to give it a shot I wouldn’t discourage it, but I don’t see myself coming back for the next issue of George. Unfortunately he didn’t do anything that I cared about and what he did do I wasn’t a fan of.
Score: 2/5
Writer: Rafak Skarycki Artist: Tomasz Lesniak Publisher: Hedgehog Comics Price: $0.99 Release Date: 4/9/14 Comixology Link