Suck

Presents thirty-two rants, essays, and parodies taken from Suck, the daily column on the World Wide Web

One of the most entertaining and important e-zines on the Web (even after "selling out" to HotWired in 1995), Suck dishes out cooler-than-thou commentary and daily unapologetic satire on pretty much any subject that deserves it. Suck: Worst Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, a collection of some of the more memorable columns from the site's long (in Web years) history, marks the first foray of the Sucksters into the world of print. Can an animated musical of Terry Colon's cartoon versions of the Suck staff be far behind?

Some of the unfortunate recipients of attention in the "repurposed content" include PBS newsman Jim Lehrer, Niketown, and Slate, Microsoft's foray into the overcrowded e-zine market. Terry Colon's distinctive illustrations pepper each column, but none of the classic narrative cartoon collaborations between Colon and columnist Polly Esther are included. This omission (as well as other missing favorites) reflects the difficult task of selecting a few dozen columns from three years of daily contributions. Or perhaps the duo is simply negotiating a book deal of their own.

Suck includes hyperlinked rants as sidebars, so you can--if you wish--roughly re-create the wandering-attention-span phenomenon associated with reading Suck online. Some readers may find the collected Sucksters too clever for their own good (if you've used the term "smart alec" in a sentence recently, this may not be your cup of tea), and readers who find themselves too cool for Suck will not be impressed. Anyone who has a sense of humor, however, especially one that finds glee in the lampooning of large media conglomerations (such as the one that employs the book's authors), will enjoy the offerings of Suck.