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Both
, approx 76 pages, illustrated in black & white
80 pages, Hardcover
First published November 3, 2003
374 people want to read
About the author
Tom Gauld
31 books763 followersTom Gauld is a cartoonist and illustrator. He draws weekly cartoons for the Guardian newspaper and New Scientist magazine. He has created eight covers for the New Yorker and a number of comic books. He lives and works in London.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 24 reviews
August 30, 2021
Goofy fun from Gauld and Lia.
August 29, 2021
2003 = £7.99
Simone Lia:
Terrible story material and worse art. The mix makes me want to throw up on it and chuck the book into a trash compactor so that I can watch it get destroyed.
Tom Gauld:
Decent story material and excellent art. This book would be a good read if her crap wasn't littered between his solid work.
Simone Lia:
Terrible story material and worse art. The mix makes me want to throw up on it and chuck the book into a trash compactor so that I can watch it get destroyed.
Tom Gauld:
Decent story material and excellent art. This book would be a good read if her crap wasn't littered between his solid work.
September 19, 2022
I really wish I had read this when it first came out so I could have been following these two a lot earlier than I did. I'm a sucker for dumb, silly, goofy, surrealistic, etc. comics so I can't give it anything other than five huge stars.
January 11, 2020
Liked the structure in this one. Mix of different simple yet heartfelt comics. Some funny bits.
January 8, 2021
A laugh out loud book.
October 27, 2023
Both, by Tom Gauld & Simone Lia
Not really anything, a few smiles. Bit odd. Gauld’s later works are really good, but not this one. **
Not really anything, a few smiles. Bit odd. Gauld’s later works are really good, but not this one. **
November 26, 2023
Very cute and funny stories
February 5, 2024
2.5/5
July 28, 2024
I liked Tom's cartoons. I didn't care for co-author Simone's contributions.
March 4, 2017
I like Gauld's weird logic tales best...
June 7, 2007
A little while ago Dresden Codak linked to these folks' website, so I spent a little while messing around there, ultimately concluding that I liked their comics a lot but not quite enough to spend actual money on them (Simone and Tom subscribing more to the tried and true capitalist system than to the "give away everything for free and hope people buy tshirts" mode adhered to by most webcomics). Fortunately, the York library didn't mind spending money on "Both" (a collection of "First" and "Second" by the same artists), so I got to read it anyway.
This book is full of tiny castles viewed from a distance, astronauts, and masked wrestlers (on Tom's part) and anthropomorphized food, bunny rabbits, and people with highways on their legs (on the part of Simone). Both of them tend to gravitate towards moments of awkwardness - for Tom that means a lot of open space, a lot of panels in which the characters are alone with their thoughts, the content of which we can only imagine. Simone's awkward moments are more overt, played out through dialogue - the one that jumps to my mind most immediately is "The Bread and Bhagi Show," where it becomes clear over the course of the broadcast that the bread considers its relationship with the bhagi to be much more intimate than the bhagi would prefer. Clearly the stuff of which great literature is made.
This book is full of tiny castles viewed from a distance, astronauts, and masked wrestlers (on Tom's part) and anthropomorphized food, bunny rabbits, and people with highways on their legs (on the part of Simone). Both of them tend to gravitate towards moments of awkwardness - for Tom that means a lot of open space, a lot of panels in which the characters are alone with their thoughts, the content of which we can only imagine. Simone's awkward moments are more overt, played out through dialogue - the one that jumps to my mind most immediately is "The Bread and Bhagi Show," where it becomes clear over the course of the broadcast that the bread considers its relationship with the bhagi to be much more intimate than the bhagi would prefer. Clearly the stuff of which great literature is made.
October 23, 2013
A quick read of interwoven stories, mostly on the close-knit solitude of an intimate relationship worth abandoning – or a distant relationship characterized by solitude. Well illustrated for its subjects, there are compelling images and stories here, but not much to carry you beyond a reading of half an hour or so. Find it at your local library and enjoy some quality reading.
December 19, 2007
The little fluffy bunny stuff that Simone Lia does makes me want to cry, it's so bloody cute. I stood in Borders once reading a tenth of a book exclusively devoted to it. This one has only two stories relating to it. The rest are good. All in all, it took 20 minutes to read the entire book though.
February 5, 2017
This is a combined edition of "First" and "Second" by Tom Gauld and Simone Lia. I love the Gauld comics and am not as impressed with Lia's. They're okay, but not as good in terms of artwork or text as Gauld's.
March 21, 2007
oh no! road leg!
June 25, 2009
I'm actually read "Second," but it appears to have the same content as "Both"? Published by Cabanon Press in 2002, so I guess it is an earlier edition.
July 27, 2011
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
May 18, 2012
Cute, whimsical, not a lot of substance. Odd contrast between art styles and no engagement between the two "streams," which I would have liked, I think.
May 16, 2013
very very amusing! :D
October 2, 2015
Witty and tremendously sad. Perhaps that is the point.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 24 reviews