In a world where everyone is looking for a job, Joey Comeau is right there with them.

Currently the author of the word portion of the popular Web comic “”A Softer World,”” Comeau began writing crank cover letters to companies and actually sending them. In each letter, he’s cordial and polite, offers new ideas that he would bring to the company and, instead of playing to the usual ploy of “”sell yourself like you’re the cream of the crop,”” he’s always brutally honest.

His latest book, “”Overqualified,”” is a collection of his fictional cover letters to major corporations thanking them for reviewing his resume (even if he didn’t actually send one) and then proceeding to tell the employer some contortion of why he would be good at the job and/or maybe even something entirely unnecessary.

The first letter, written to Irving Oil, says that his being hired is contingent on the fact that he is from the future sent back in time to take the company down. They’re not all so bizarre, but they’re each pretty eccentric in that brilliant, making-you-think kind of way. One suggests to Hallmark that they impose a new holiday – International Stalker Day, since the sad truth of it is that secret admirers are all just stalkers now. “”Dear Greenpeace,”” another one begins. “”All day I have been thinking about is sex.””

The book is very loosely based around the story of Comeau after his brother has been in a car accident and he needs a job to pay the medical bills. Unprepared to deal with life without his brother, Comeau resorts to writing cover letter after cover letter, expounding on the near-uselessness of it all. Mostly it’s about Comeau’s ideas, both beautiful and absurd. The letters come across somewhat like he’s talking to a shrink while simultaneously writing in his own journal, always asking for a job, always sharing a personal anecdote. He recalls stories of his childhood, memories of his brother, anything he can think of. It’s interesting the way Comeau manages to transcend the understanding of this taking place following his brother’s accident, and he manages it well.

The sincerity with which he writes is mesmerizing, and even though each cover letter is a scant two pages, they’re full of painful emotion. It’s a unique way to tell a story and definitely worth checking out.