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Where's the complaining about the covers? Where's the gnashing of teeth over the state of the industry? Believe it or not, we're foregoing that this time, because this month's catalog helped me shake the February blues. Really, there's plenty here to be proud of, enough that I couldn't narrow down my selections for Picks of the Month. So, instead of Picks, you get...
THE ALAN MOORE MEMORIAL COMICS SECTION AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The spheres have converged, and the great hairy magus is eating the direct market alive:
PROMETHEA BOOK THREE, by Alan Moore, JH Williams and Mick Gray
MAR03 0259, pg. 91, $14.95
It's here that the book shunts aside the main storyline for a long stretch and wanders off on an extended tour of the immaterial realms. So now I get to see what everybody else was complaining about. To be honest, I couldn't justify why I'm so enthralled by a book that's chiefly about explaining the finer points of a belief system to which I don't subscribe. Paul O'Brien's asked in these pages whether readers would be as open to a similar book on Catholic theology; I must confess that I don't think I would be.
Perhaps PROMETHEA bothers me less because there's no chance of magicians influencing the writing of my country's laws. Or perhaps it's just the sheer dazzling craft of the book. This is the most cleverly constructed and most ornately decorated comic on the stands. It may be Moore with training wheels compared to THE BIRTH CAUL or SNAKES AND LADDERS, but as storytelling it's pioneering.
Also from ABC this month: THE MANY WORLDS OF TESLA STRONG (MAR03 0258, pg. 90, $5.95) a prestige one-shot written by Peter Hogan & Moore and featuring a dozen or so artists.
ALAN MOORE: PORTRAIT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, edited by Gary Spencer Millidge
MAR03 1882, pg. 222, $14.95
This is a tribute to Moore assembled by Gary Spencer Millidge, creator of the infrequent-but-excellent STRANGEHAVEN (see listing below), and featuring contributions from everybody. No, really: if you take a magnifying glass to that tiny white-on-black text in the ad and squint hard, you will find the name of every comics creator working today. Highlights should include a biography in comics form of Moore by Millidge and an introduction by Terry Gilliam. At $15 for 272 pages (including a colour section) it's a bargain, and all proceeds go to charity, in aid of Alzheimer's disease. I can't imagine anyone with more than a passing interest in Moore not wanting this.
A SMALL KILLING, by Alan Moore & Oscar Zarate Softcover: MAR03 2002, pg. 242, $16.95 Hardcover: MAR03 2003, pg. 242, $24.95
Who'd ever have thought, only a couple of years ago that we'd ever see Avatar publish - okay, republish - a truly literary graphic novel?
This isn't the Great Lost Alan Moore Work - that's BIG NUMBERS - but it is the Great Overlooked Alan Moore Work. It's one of a handful of full-colour original graphic novels that prestigious prose-book publisher Victor Gollancz put out in the wake of MAUS, when it first seemed as if the market was ready for adult, literary comics. It wasn't, and the experiment folded quickly. But VG put out some important books, among them Gaiman and McKean's SIGNAL TO NOISE and this.
A SMALL KILLING is about a tormented ad man (my favourite kind, yuk yuk yuk) named Timothy Hole. It's nothing to do with his career - in fact, he's just landed a plum account, the selling of soda to a newly liberated Russia. No, it's more to do with the recent crack-up of his marriage, and with the mysterious schoolboy who has taken to following him. And who means to kill him.
More than that, though, it's Moore's parting shot at the '80s. It's not obviously political. But remember, this is a book that immediately follows V FOR VENDETTA, about what Moore saw as creeping authoritarianism in Britain; WATCHMEN, over which the specter of the Cold War hung heavily; and BROUGHT TO LIGHT, a history of the CIA in general and Iran-Contra in particular.
Moore seemed convinced that society couldn't stand the strain of the Cold War much longer. As it turned out, it didn't have to; much to the surprise of everybody, the CIA most of all, the Soviet Union simply collapsed. The boomers who made accommodations and compromised their youthful idealism were spared a crisis of conscience by events. But they aren't spared by Moore. And that's what A SMALL KILLING is really about.
It's a very modernist piece of work. There are three levels to the narrative: there's Hole's stream of consciousness narration, grounded against a realistic social setting (gotten across by devices like the ambient chatter); there are Hole's reminiscences, which keep going further backwards in time; and there's the pursuit by the child, which gradually tips the whole thing over into magic realism as all three threads converge in the phantasmagorical climax. That's not the impressive part, though. Moore's books are always fiendishly clever, but they don't always have heart. This one does.
Oscar Zarate is a very modernist artist, and a perfect match for the book. He's like a cross between Jose Munoz and Lorenzo Mattotti; grotesquely etched figures and startling, unsettling colour. He handles the contrasting tones of the narrative threads with great skill and expertly evokes Hole's paranoia. Moore himself says, "A SMALL KILLING is one of the best pieces of comic book art I have ever been involved in". The new edition features "completely remastered artwork", though it's not made clear what that means, along with new lettering, "a commentary article by Moore and Zarate", and new covers, which make the identity of the schoolboy slightly less obvious.
TOP SHELF: ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS, edited by Rob Goodin & Brett Warnock, from Top Shelf
MAR03 2457, pg. 332, $24.95
Double the length of the last Top Shelf anthology, and at least three or four times the size of any previous issue, it looks like TOP SHELF: ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS aims to give DRAWN & QUARTERLY a run for its money. The big attraction here is an Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie short story that DC wouldn't run. It was originally a Cobweb story done for his ABC anthology TOMORROW STORIES, but because it contained an anecdote about L Ron Hubbard, founder of the ludicrous and extremely litigious Church of Scientology, DC spiked it on advice of their lawyers. This, despite the fact that DC had published the very same anecdote in a non-fiction story in one of their BIG BOOKS through the Paradox imprint. At long last, it sees print here.
Also in this issue: a star-studded art-comics tribute to PEANUTS creator Charles Schulz, a wide array of international talent, and a feature on David Chelsea, who holds the distinction of being the most proficient draftsman of the '90s autobiographical cartoonists, and also, no mean feat this, the most insufferable kvetch. This looks like an outstanding line-up.
COMICS ALAN MOORE HASN'T GOT ANYTHING TO DO WITH
POP GUN WAR, by Farel Dalrymple
MAR03 0030, pg. 32, $13.95
Now this is a pleasant surprise. The first five issues of Dalrymple's Xeric-winning series POP GUN WAR are being collected not by its original publisher, the young and rising Absence of Ink, but by Dark Horse, which gives it a much better chance of being seen. As it should be. This is a refreshingly gentle and highly accomplished book.
The opening is one of the most striking I've seen in ages. An angel plummets from the sky and crashlands on an inner city street. (Not your stereotypical angel - this one looks like a poor man's Henry Rollins.) Nobody seems alarmed by this. In fact, the one person who takes any special notice of him is the man with the chainsaw. Why a chainsaw? To lop the angel's wings off with, of course. These are discarded in a sidewalk trashcan... and retrieved by a young boy named Sinclair...
We are in the realm of the allegorical, you'll have surmised. If this were a normal comic book, Sinclair would revel in his new-found power and fly off in search of adventure. He doesn't. He's intensely serious and not at all sure what he wants to become. (Dalrymple hammers that point a bit by having Sinclair wander into an old FAR SIDE joke at the end of issue one. But it's a rare misstep.) This book's not about escapism. If anything, it seems to be about not letting yourself be seduced by the media. Assuming that megalomaniac puppeteers and corporate shills with talking heads in satchels can be said to be part of the media.
Or maybe the key to understanding the whole thing is the giant floating bespectacled fish. Who knows? Understanding isn't really the point, though this isn't surrealism for its own sake. POP GUN WAR is like a good dream - you can't explain it, but it resonates.
And the draughtsmanship is incredible, too. Go to Dalrymple's website and coo over the many sample pages.
B.P.R.D.: THE SOUL OF VENICE, by Miles Gunter & Michael Avon Oeming, with Mike Mignola
MAR03 0020, pg. 21, $2.99
A one-shot adventure of the HELLBOY second bananas, with guidance by HELLBOY creator Mignola.
SOCK MONKEY #1 (of 2), by Tony Millionaire
MAR03 0022, pg. 24, $2.99
When Millionaire isn't wringing laffs out of piracy and alcoholism in his alt-weekly strip MAAKIES, he's getting exquisitely creepy in his Victorian-children's-book-style series SOCK MONKEY. Tragedy will ensue. It always does.
ILLEGAL ALIEN, by James Robinson & Phil Elliott
MAR03 0024, pg. 27, $10.95
This is a reprint of a long out of print graphic novel from 1994, about an alien stranded on Earth who takes over the body of a gangster in mod London. It's written by James Robinson (LEAVE IT TO CHANCE) and drawn in clear line style by British cartoonist Phil Elliott. I've never heard of it before now, but it looks interesting.
In addition to the America's Best Comics stuff, there's:
BARNUM! by Howard Chaykin, David Tischman & Niko Henrichon Hardcover: MAR03 0265, pg. 92, $29.99
A Vertigo original graphic novel, in which the world's greatest circus impresario PT Barnum and his band of freaks are recruited by President Grover Cleveland to save America from mad inventor Nikola Tesla. Yes, it's daffy. It's nice to see Vertigo going in for comedy, and to see Chaykin and Tischman doing something other than the easy, ugly cynicism of AMERICAN CENTURY. (And for once, presumably, we'll get a Chaykin protagonist who isn't irresistible to women and doesn't get blown every ten pages!)
TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL. 8: DIRGE, by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos
MAR03 0278, pg. 94, $14.95
New collection of the sci-fi political satire, here nearing its endgame. And this is the optimal format of it, because by this time Ellis was writing for the collections; half of this volume is devoted to a single event, a devastating rainstorm, in an exercise in narrative decompression.
AGE OF BRONZE #17, by Eric Shanower
MAR03 1263, pg. 106, $3.50
More of Eric Shanower's finely wrought and comprehensive recounting of the whole goddamn Trojan War. In this issue: the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
STRANGEHAVEN #15, by Gary Spencer Millidge
MAR03 1881, pg. 222, $2.95
In addition to the Alan Moore tribute, Millidge has put out a new issue of his acclaimed series STRANGEHAVEN, the photo-realistically rendered yarn about a remote, eccentric English village that nobody seems able to leave. One of the annual candidates for Best Comic You're Not Reading. (And I do mean annual - it's been coming out once per year.)
SAME DIFFERENCE & OTHER STORIES, by Derek Kirk Kim
MAR03 1895, pg. 226, $12
This is Kirk Kim's print debut, at least writing his own material. But he's already made his name on the web, through his own site and through the excellent subscription service Serializer.net. He's even a favourite of webcomics guru Scott McCloud. And he's just won a Xeric grant for this collection. When you see his stuff, it's easy to see why: he's got a very clean and instantly appealing drawing style and an easygoing knack for setting up jokes. So go look at his stuff. There's lots to see.
AIM TO DAZZLE #1, by Dean Haspiel
MAR03 1894, pg. 226, $3.50
The further adventures of Billy Dogma, billed as "the last romantic anti-hero", a big emotional and chronically-unemployable lug who looks like a quarterback but talks like a flowery dimestore novel. Billy Dogma takes prose beyond purple and all the way to ultraviolet. If Stan & Jack had done a relationship comic in the Mighty Marvel Manner back in the '60s, it might have come out something like this. It's really rather sweet, though it requires a high tolerance for bombast.
AMAZE INK (SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS)
DORK VOL. 2: CIRCLING THE DRAIN, by Evan Dorkin
MAR03 1905, pg. 227, $13.95
Collects everything from issues #7-10 of Dorkin's catch-all anthology, excepting the Eltingville strips. The centrepiece of this is the big catharsis from #7, "Cluttered, Like My Head", in which Dorkin drops the funnyman mask and has a nervous breakdown live on 'stage'. For those of you who found that 'self-indulgent', rest assured that the rest of it is the pure comedy at which Dorkin excels - Christ, he actually worries that he's not talented? I'd love to be a tenth as 'untalented' as he is. Even his throwaway gags never fail to put me on the floor. And his craft improves with each passing issue, too, becoming less manic and more controlled. If you don't find Evan Dorkin funny, I don't want to know you.
ENTER AVARIZ, by Marc Ngui
MAR03 2132, pg. 278, $18
This is a cartoony attack on global capitalism, told, according to the publisher's description, "in a single tumbling video-game-style narrative". Um. There's more than a little hippy stink clinging to this, but on the other hand, it's endorsed by the brilliant Tom Hart (HUTCH OWEN), who called it "a funny 21st century Alice In Wonderland - a celebratory romp and novelty song to the human spirit with great cartooning, loopy jokes and something to say".
DANCING ELEPHANT PRESS
BURGLAR BILL #1 (of 6), by Paul Grist
MAR03 2139, pg. 280, $2.95
The thing that impresses me the most about Grist's police procedural KANE is the seemingly effortless way he integrates comic relief into the story without sacrificing the drama. There aren't many people working in comics today who can more deftly choreograph a farcical set piece than Paul Grist. BURGLAR BILL is, I understand, an out-and-out comedy. Glee!
BERLIN #10, by Jason Lutes
MAR03 2146, pg. 280, $3.50
Another of the annual candidates for Best Comics You're Not Reading. BERLIN is a cross-section of the Weimar Republic in the beginning stages of decay. Lutes is a masterful storyteller - it's no wonder that he's a favorite of Scott McCloud - and BERLIN is superbly controlled comics. Essential.
EPOXY #2 SIGNED & NUMBERED EDITION, by John Pham
MAR03 2200, pg. 294, $3.95
Another special reissue of the Xeric-winning comic. Snap this up so that you'll be prepared when #3 is solicited through Diamond. No, I take that back: you still will not be prepared for #3 even if you buy the first two issues. But buy them anyway.
KRAZY & IGNATZ 1929-30: A MICE, A BRICK, A LOVELY NIGHT, by George Herriman
MAR03 2214, pg. 296, $14.95
The third of Fantagraphics' extraordinarily handsome reprint volumes of KRAZY KAT, by widespread acclimation the finest comic strip of all time. As ever, it includes biographical notes and "rare Herriman ephemera from [series designer Chris] Ware's own extensive collection".
QUIMBY THE MOUSE, by Chris Ware Softcover: MAR03 2218, pg. 297, $14.95 Hardcover: MAR03 2219, pg. 297, $24.95
It's fitting that Ware is designing the KRAZY KAT volumes - just as there's a little Charlie Brown in Jimmy Corrigan, there's a little KRAZY KAT in his creation Quimby the Mouse. The chief difference is that in KRAZY, Herriman set up a triangle in which not everyone could get what they desired at any given time; whereas the great lesson of QUIMBY is that you can get what you desire and still not be very happy.
In the 'Quimby & Sparky' strips, Quimby is enamoured of a decapitated cat; in the 'Quimbies the Mouse' strip, he sprouts an extra head and torso. When Sparky and the other Quimby are around, Quimby secretly resents their dependence on him; when they're gone, he finds himself cripplingly lonely.
Formally, these strips are the most inventive in American comics, bar none. A page might have 325 panels, or just one, or nothing you could properly call a panel at all. Ware's notoriously mind-bending flowcharts are represented in force.
But mere cleverness, I hasten to assure you, is not the point. People get the impression from the layouts and the pared-down, diagrammatic drawing style that the strips are bloodless and cold, but nothing could be further from the truth. These strips sting, because they reveal how easy it is to inflict pain without even letting yourself be aware of it. If the words, "I'm just feeling a little boxed in, that's all", mean anything to you, you'll have no trouble relating to QUIMBY THE MOUSE.
This book was first announced in September 2001, and is being solicited for the third time. Keep your fingers crossed.
THE PIRATES AND THE MOUSE: DISNEY'S WAR AGAINST THE UNDERGROUND, by Bob Levin
MAR03 2216, pg. 297, $24
Apparently it's Mouse Month at Fantagraphics. This isn't a comic, but a work of journalism about the Air Pirates, a '60s underground comics collective that was foolhardy enough to do a close parody of Mickey Mouse comics that involved sex and drugs. Disney, horrified by the perversion of what they termed Mickey's "image of innocent delight", promptly unleashed their hordes of bloodhungry lawyers. And yet the cartoonists, dirt poor though they were, managed to fight the suit for years and achieve, if not a victory, at least a respectable draw. Author Bob Levin is a writer for The Comics Journal (in fact, two of the book's chapters have been excerpted in the Journal), and he's always been distinguished for his New Journalism-ish reportage style.
KING VOL 3, by Ho Che Anderson
MAR03 2213, pg. 296, $11.95
This is the final volume of Anderson's biography of Martin Luther King, covering the last few years of his life. VOL 2 came out last year, and I don't relish saying this about a comic that was ten years in the making, particularly one with such ambition, but I found it a disappointment.
The great accomplishment of VOL 1 was in its portrayal of King as a flesh-and-blood human being, rather than merely a plaster saint. However, VOL 2 begins in 1960, shortly after King had become a national figure, and so Anderson is forced to deal more with King's public life than his private life. Politics don't lend themselves well to dramatisation. The scenes with Kennedy, particularly, are jammed full of exposition from the very first words spoken.
Then there's the art. VOL 1 looked wonderful, I thought - Anderson's use of photorealistic chiaroscuro made everything look like it was captured by the flashbulb's glare. But in VOL 2, there are spots where it comes down with a bad case of the McKeans - figures look strangely chiselled, lines get scratchier and harsher, the hand of the artist becomes too apparent. I'm not saying it's a bad style just because it's less attractive, just that it's not congruent.
But what most disappointed me was the book's climax. Anderson presents King's "I Have a Dream" speech, only slightly abridged. This is a speech with which most Americans are deeply familiar, and so the challenge of a sequence like this is to make it new, to slow the reader down until they take heed of every word. KING VOL 2 fails at this.
First off, it's here that the limitations of the computer lettering and balloons are shown up. I'm not asking for Greg Capullo-style excesses here, but lettering is part of the acting in comics. By using the plainest typeface imaginable, and by not breaking the speech down more than he does, Anderson has made the words easy to skip. And as for the graphics, Anderson leans mostly on photomontage, which starts out being grey and dull, and ends up badly jumbled and marred by random colour tints and ill-advised Photoshop effects. It simply doesn't work.
This is just one man's opinion, of course. Many critics, such as TIME.com reviewer Andrew Arnold, loved both volumes.
PORTAJOHNNY, by Johnny Ryan
MAR03 2217, pg. 297, $14.95
In touting the first issue of Peter Bagge's SWEATSHOP last month, I said something about missing the spirit of the undergrounds and my heart belonging to comics that were rude and loud and funny and etc. I was so full of shit that I'm amazed nobody called me on it. What few underground-style humour comics there are these days, LOWEST COMIC DENOMINATOR and ARSENIC LULLABY and Johnny Ryan's stuff, I've been entirely dismissive of. I haven't really worked that out yet. (Would it help if I pledged my love for Sam Henderson and Ivan Brunetti?)
Anyhow, this collects all the pre-Fantagraphics issues of ANGRY YOUTH COMIX, among other things. And it has an introduction by Peter Bagge, who counts Ryan as one of his favourite cartoonists working.
THE COMICS JOURNAL #253
MAR03 2211, pg. 296, $6.95
The subject of this month's massive interview: Eric Drooker, the leftist cartoonist who revived the spirit of the wordless woodcut-novels of the early 1900s to spectacular effect in his books FLOOD and BLOOD SONG.
GREAT APE, by Patrick Neighly & 'Brahma'
MAR03 2308, pg. 312, $3.50
The co-author of ANARCHY FOR THE MASSES, the recent INVISIBLES guide, makes his comics-writing debut with a primate-based funnybook. I am weary of primate-based funnybooks, but then so is Steven Grant, and he wound up being charmed by this. Chris Allen was too, with reservations (spoiler warning: Allen's review reveals a core plot twist). Allen calls the art Mignola-esque, but judging from the six-page preview, it's more deco than noir, more reminiscent to me of a cartoonist Mignola has collaborated with, Pat McEown. Worth a look.
CHIAROSCURO #7, by Troy Little
MAR03 2311, pg. 312, $2.75
This book impresses me a little more with each passing issue. The most recent issue I've seen is #5, which consists solely of conversation, and I particularly like how it slowly dawns on our hero, snide young layabout and failing artist Steven Patch, that a man he thinks of as trash is in a position to do him a favour. I get the premonition that Patch is drifting into a trap of BARTON FISK-esque proportions. The CLERKS-y opening was funny, too.
HOW LOATHSOME #2, by Ted Naifeh & Tristan Crane
MAR03 2334, pg. 314, $2.95
A new story of "gender outlaw" Catherine Gore and her adventures on the sexual avant-garde. (It turns out that each issue is a self-contained story, rather than a chapter in a continuous story.) Very much looking forward to this. NBM has kindly provided you with a long preview of issue #1, and a couple pages of issue #2 - go have a look.
THE COMPLETE GEISHA, by Andi Watson
MAR03 2357, pg. 318, $15.95
This is the definitive collection of the book Watson did just before the kitchen-sink relationship books that have lately made his name. This is not kitchen-sink: it is set in the not-too-distant future and stars a young android girl, Jomi. She is a painter, but being an android has kept her art from being accepted. It's a clever conceit that allows Watson to draw on two of the great modern ponderables at once: Can an artificial life form have a soul? and Can a reproduction of a work of art have an aura?
That's just the underpinning. The coating of the book is pure candy, replete with robots, crabby supermodels and organised crime. Watson's drawing is cutesier and less flattened here than in his relationship books, but it's still high on minimalist chic. And you can see for yourselves, because Oni has kindly put the entire first issue online for you to read.
MAGAZINES
ALLEY OOP VOL. 4, by VT Hamlin with Jack Bender, from Manuscript Press
MAR03 2533, pg. 349, $25
This is not a magazine; why it's been stuck in this section, where nobody will see it, I can't guess. What it is, is a collection of the classic strip, picking up where the Kitchen Sink series left off a decade ago, covering the years 1949-1950.
Alley Oop, the title character, was a caveman with a Popeye-ish physique: great bulging forearms and forelegs, skinny pipe-cleaner triceps and thighs. And for its first years, ALLEY OOP was only about cavemen. But creator VT Hamlin got restless, so he had Oop plucked from his native Moo by a 20th-century time machine on a scientific expedition. Thanks to the time machine, Hamlin was able to send Oop off adventuring in any historical period he wished; in this volume, for instance, Oop "fights Amazon warriors, joins Caesar's legions, meets a mermaid, and rides with Richard the Lionhearted on the Third Crusade". He even went to the moon, once.
I submit that a two-fisted caveman with a time machine is one of comics' all-time great ideas.
And the art was terrific, too, combining the exuberance of EC Segar with the hard edges and solidity of Chester Gould. The more exotic a locale, the more Hamlin relished drawing it. (And I find this more cartoony style infinitely more engaging than the stuffy classically-illustrated vistas of PRINCE VALIANT and FLASH GORDON, which also have collections in this month's catalogue.) There's no room for an adventure strip this grand on today's newspaper comics pages, but at least there's a publisher willing to carry on reprinting it.
COMIC ART MAGAZINE #3
MAR03 2536, pg. 349, $9
The first two issues are out, and as expected it's a sumptuous publication. It's the next best thing to a gallery show, except that it's hard to imagine a gallery that would have the guts to include, as in issue #3 of COMIC ART, Rodolphe Töpffer, Savage Pencil, and Silver Age JLA artist Mike Sekowsky in the same exhibition. Buy it and feast your eyes.
BOOKS: COMICS THEMES
PERSEPOLIS: THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD, by Marjane Satrapi, from Pantheon Hardcover: MAR03 2696, pg. 367, $17.95
Remember Iran? The quiet member of what my ludicrous president insists on calling the 'Axis of Evil'? They've made strides towards liberalisation in recent years, but it was not long ago that they were one of the most repressive theocracies in the world. Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran, and her graphic memoir PERSEPOLIS is about how it got that way.
Satrapi can claim a royal lineage - her great-grandfather was Iran's last emperor. Before the revolution, this afforded her family a degree of protection, even though they were committed Marxists and had many relatives who had been arrested for political agitation. After the revolution, of course, it afforded none.
Satrapi wrote the book to dispel Western ignorance about her former home: "They seem to think Iran has always been a country of religious fundamentalists, that Iranian women either have no place in our society or that they are hysterical black crows. In fact, Iranian women are not downtrodden weeds ... even during the worst period of the Iranian Revolution, women were carrying weapons."
PERSEPOLIS was first published in France, where it was an immediate hit, winning several awards and even drawing comparisons to MAUS and David B's EPILEPTIC. The drawing style is closer to EPILEPTIC, but simpler and without the surrealism. I'll be honest, it looks a little lighter-weight to me than either of those books, judging by the online sample I've read. But still, this should merit a closer look.
BOOKS: HOW TO
HOGARTH'S DYNAMIC ANATOMY REVISED, by Burne Hogarth
MAR03 2714, pg. 368, $24.95
The word 'dynamic' is there for a reason: Burne never drew a figure that wasn't straining some sinews. This edition of this pre-eminent reference book has been "revised, expanded, and completely redesigned with 75 never-before published drawings from the Hogarth archives and 24 pages of new material".
BOOKS: HUMOUR
MUTTS VOL. 8: I WANT TO BE THE KITTY, by Patrick McDonnell, from Andrews McMeel
MAR03 2719, pg. 370, $10.95
Among the best modern strips. Which, admittedly, isn't saying much, and MUTTS doesn't have much of anything on its mind. But it's one of very few remaining strips that pleases the eye, has a strong design sense, and has verve enough to stand out from the pack of competent but exceedingly familiar strips (see, also in this month's books section: FOX TROT, GET FUZZY, ZITS).
SLOPPY SECONDS, by Bill Plympton
MAR03 2722, pg. 370, $12
More completely disreputable gag cartoons by the renowned animator and caricaturist.
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