Not so long ago, I was pretty rough on the first issue of cartoonist Jai Granofsky’s self-published “solo anthology” series, What The Actual. I found it unfocused, uninspired, unfunny, and uninteresting. I took no pleasure in raking the book over the coals — I never do, particularly when it comes to “labors of love” — but I think (or at least I hope) that I avoided laying a “give it up and stick with the day job” type of trip on the artist himself. Certainly his solid “classical cartooning” style provides evidence enough that Granofsky has some talent, but my feeling was that his entire project was in need of a good, solid “re-think” from top to bottom.

Enter the just-released What The Actual #2, which isn’t exactly a complete re-tooling, but at least represents a kind of promising, albeit tentative, step in the right direction — and…