{"id":7061588,"date":"2026-09-20T00:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T00:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/ew-its-beautiful-by-joshua-barkman\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T00:43:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T00:43:26","slug":"ew-its-beautiful-by-joshua-barkman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7061588","title":{"rendered":"Ew, It’s Beautiful by Joshua Barkman"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Did you know there are at least two comics about animals that talk? (Random animals, out in the world, and not talking to\u00a0humans, but to each other.) I say “at least” because if there’s two, there’s probably more than that.<\/p>\n

The one I was vaguely aware of is called (unsurprisingly) They Can Talk<\/i>, and has been running for more than ten years. But I ran across a book in my library app from a different<\/i>\u00a0comic, False Knees<\/a><\/i>, and decided in my whimsical way to read that one.<\/p>\n

For a reductive comparison, Talk<\/i>\u00a0has a lot of domestic animals (dogs, cats, and so on) who live around people, and occasionally goes wider. Knees<\/i>\u00a0is mostly about birds – lots of different kinds of birds, depicted as far as I can tell exceptionally accurately – with occasional cats. So choose your talking-animal strip appropriately.<\/p>\n

Ew, It’s Beautiful<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>is the second False Knees<\/i>\u00a0collection; it was published in July of 2025. The cartoonist is Joshua Barkman, who lives in Southern Ontario and who I suspect sees a lot of the same birds that I do here a few hundred miles south in Northern New Jersey.<\/p>\n

What I mean by that is that I can’t necessarily identify all of these birds – I do see jays and crows and cardinals and pigeons and a whole lot of those small nut-eating birds of various kinds – but I do recognize<\/i>\u00a0most of them, thinking “I’ve seen dudes like that at the birdbath out the back window.” Barkman gives them body language and speech – obviously – but he mostly keeps them birds<\/i>; they’re all recognizable, and, more subtly, the things they care about and the topics of the comics are very bird-centric.<\/p>\n

Ew, It’s Beautiful<\/i>\u00a0is funny, but not Borscht Belt funny – not funny like so many daily-style strips. The strips are deeply about how these birds (and others, poking through while writing this I saw a strip about a beaver and one with an ant) actually live and behave, slightly exaggerated for humor but not all that far. I don’t think I laughed out loud, but I appreciated all of the strips: they’re thoughtful and interesting and smart in subtle ways.<\/p>\n

The art is ink and gouache, for a soft organic look and bright natural colors. It might not need saying, but Barkman is very<\/i>\u00a0good at depicting specific birds; it’s kind of his thing here.<\/p>\n

Barkman has arranged this book in four sections according to the seasons, starting with Winter; there’s about 130 comics here, so roughly one for every three days of a whole year. And you can go through it with these loud, demanding, millet-loving little fellas, if you like. They’re not overly fond of humans, but I think you’ll come to like them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know there are at least two comics about animals that talk? (Random animals, out in the world, and not talking to\u00a0humans, but to each other.) I say “at least” because if there’s two, there’s probably more than that. The one I was vaguely aware of is called (unsurprisingly) They Can Talk, and has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7061589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,102571,150879,116,123249,97595],"tags":[223600,1622,5873],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7061588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-book","category-cartoon","category-comics","category-king","category-reviews","tag-barkman","tag-beautiful","tag-joshua"],"yoast_head":"\nEw, It's Beautiful by Joshua Barkman - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7061588\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ew, It's Beautiful by Joshua Barkman - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Did you know there are at least two comics about animals that talk? 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