Loads of Learned Lumber

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Roz Chast (ed.) and Bill Kartalopoulos (series ed.), _The Best American Comics 2016_

JUST GOES TO show me not to presume--since Roz Chast's New Yorker cartoons, which I enjoy, derive a lot of their humor from the timidity and circumspection of mild-mannered, utterly domesticated people in utterly normal settings, I expected this volume to stay put in the respectable middle of the road.

And certainly most of the book is about in that range--strong, excellent work that is not particularly risky: Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Joe Sacco, Richard McGuire, Nina Bunjevac. But then there are also some nerve-scraping pages from Casanova Frankenstein (a nom de plume, do you think?) the E.C.-Segar-on-bad-acid of Marc Bell's Stroppy, and the self-published "Don't Leave Me Alone"by G.G., which is terrifying.

So you never know--more to the point, I never know. As Bill K. announces in the very first sentence of the foreword, "There is no 'mainstream' in comics."

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