Rose is Rose Right on the Lips: A Rose is Rose Collection (Paperback)

by Pat Brady (Author) "FOR YOUR SIZE, ROSE, YOU HAVE A POWERFUL GRAVITATIONALMMM....." (more)
Key Phrases: watch both sides, page corners

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Pat Brady’s comic strips send readers to another plane. That’s quite an accomplishment for a simple story line centered on a two-parent, single-child family. But Brady’s readers soar, through both the laughs and a visual visceral connection to the feelings the characters themselves experience. Rose is Rose Right on the Lips: A Rose is Rose Collection continues the tales of the Gumbo family. Rose is the wife and mother, a child at heart who just happens to have a biker chick alter ego. Husband Jimbo, a “decent Neanderthal,” looks like an average blue-collar dad, but he’s actually an incurable romantic. And Pasquale, their son, is an imagination-fired kid who loves Peekaboo, the family cat, and is often saved from trouble by his guardian angel. Brady swirls this familial mix into seemingly endless recipes of fun, adventure, and fantasy, but he adds a special magic with his original sense of perspective and space that makes readers feel as though they, too, are part of the action. This collection of daily and Sunday strips from the past year is a great introduction to those new to Rose is Rose and a surefire winner with longtime Gumbo-family fans. The creator adds value for all readers by including two flip books in the pages’ lower corners, delightfully animating the characters right in front of their eyes!

About the Author
As a six-year-old, Pat Brady took his drawing materials to church and used the pew as a desk while he sat on the kneeler. By 11, he was submitting comic strips to newspapers. But it wasn't until 1984 that Pat, who studied art and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, began drawing Rose is Rose full-time for national syndication. Today, his work appears in 600 newspapers, and Pat has been nominated five times for the National Cartoonist Society's Best Newspaper Comic Strip Award and six times for the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. Pat and his wife live in Illinois.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0740739557
• ISBN-13: 978-0740739552
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,019,001 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rose is back, September 30, 2003

By	Joshua Koppel (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Rose is Rose is a two-part series. One part shows the extremely romantic Rose and Jimbo. Few couples can match their love and romance. The other part concerns their son Pasquale and being a little boy in a loving family. These two elements combine into one of the best strips around.

In this volume, the romance and kissing have been turned up. Jimbo can not escape Rose's gravitational pull. Rose's alter ego (the biker chick) is also back in a lot of strips.

One of the best collections yet.

Rose is Rose can appeal to both the young and old alike. It's characters and humor are almost universal.

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gosh, the characters are getting dizzier and dizzier!=O, October 21, 2003

By	R. Garcia "Beeyotch" (Brockport, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Rose is Rose" is truly the perfect recipe for hyper-happiness, which probably doesn't exist anywhere on the Earth anyway. But at least there are a few bitter (but very brief) episodes every now and then in Rose's incredibly perfect family with a very, very devoted, loving ape-like husband and an adorable little cherub of a son who knows nothing but complete innocence and bliss of just being a happy tot in an almost-utopian suburban world.

The art is getting more and more minimal-looking and it also looks more scratchy as if the tip of Pat Brady's brush is suddenly split in two (yep, happens to us cartoonists, sometimes.) The characters, especially Rose are getting quite ditzy and flighty, yet can still get away with hell (Rose once threw a screaming fit just because she lost something in a public restaurant.) And there is also far more hugging and kissing than normally required for a standard comic strip. The pet cat (eternally a baby kitten), Peekaboo's ears are getting bigger and floppier as if they are turning into a piglet's ears. To make her cuter and more fluffier than ever before, I bet. In all, the strip is a bit sillier and cloying than it has always been.

But at least we have some cool things like Pasquale's guardian angel suddenly turning into a towering warrior (getting more overprotective than ever, aren't we?), Peekaboo doing some weird things (like turning her eyes into fireballs at night), and of course, there's always Vicki, the biker babe that grandly emerges whenever Rose gets too soft and dowdy for her own good.;)

0 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The 21st Century , April 7, 2005

By	Llamas are cute and funny (Texas) - See all my reviews

[...]. Very well drawn; clearly Mr. (Mrs.? Ever since SNL did "It's Pat!" I hedge my bets until I've seen a photo) Brady is a talented artist. But do we really need another cartoon in the "Cathy" vein? What a waste of talent. Meanwhile, guys who can't draw, [...], regularly do original -- and funny -- work.

Actually, looking over that, I realize I'm doing "Cathy" a disservice. "Cathy" is downright edgy compared to this. A pudgy suburban couple (why do both of them wear Mom jeans?) and their kid, preciously named Pasquale, who apparently stole Nancy's hair while she was asleep. Where was Sluggo? Pasquale's best friend is some kid whose barber was apparently a big fan of former WWF star The Missing Link. Whatever town this is set in badly needs a Fantastic Sam's or a Cartoon Cuts.

The family's surname is Gumbo, which implies a spice and flavor that is lacking here. It would be like Dick Cheney changing his last name to Vigor. The wife often has daydreams where she appears to morph into a member of the '80's band Vixen. The husband is pathetic and totally uninteresting. There's a cat, which is never good; it's very stylishly drawn but exists solely to run through the bag of old, tired "aren't cats cute?" gags. That "Get Fuzzy" cat is the closest thing I've seen to an accurate cartoon cat. And I've seen several papers that carry "Rose" but not "Fuzzy," even though Darby Conley's as good an artist and thrice as funny at least as Pat(rick? ricia?) Brady.

Again, what a waste. Weirdness for weirdness's sake isn't edgy. It's just weird. And tired. And insulting. Newspapers that carry this instead of relevant, funny strips like "La Cucaracha" should be shut down.[...].
Why doesn't Amazon have a "less than zero stars" option?