The Collected Hutch Owen

Rating:
Summary: A lot of laughs, and a lot to think about.
Review: I bought Hutch Owen expecting to laugh, not learn. But if a cartoon book about an anarchic vagrant can be funny, and educational, and touching, and a thousand other things, so much the better.

Hutch is a hard-working man, whose work just happens to be railing against the system and alerting the common man to the depradations of Big Business, embodied in the book by "Worner Products". (CEO Dennis Worner has some...odd....ideas, among them a line of Malcolm X clothing and paraphernalia and a bizarre soft drink, plus the "Punk Rock Car.....GET ANGRY FOR IT!!!!" I suspsct that some of these products would, in real life, be big sellers....)

Hutch tries to impart gentle lessons in humanity to people, and I found his friendship with a little boy, and their quest to build a "Hideout" from the rest of the world to be particularly touching. The 3rd story in the 4 story book is a flat-out gutbuster, as Hutch is forced to get a job (gasp...) for the stock-market. The way he innocently plays all of the idiotic traders for fools, and casually manipulates the market, is hilarious.

In the end, we would all be better off if we really had a Hutch Owen......