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...Kramer's Ergot" number four (Avodah Books; 324 pp.; $24.95), a mammoth example of these new books, gives strong competition to high-end museum catalogues but at one-quarter the price. Avodah Books boils down to one man, Sammy Harkham, a big, bearded guy in his twenties who means to knock you out with aesthetic overload. "Ergot" is not a book to take on a plane to lose yourself in a great story. Many of the contributions couldn't even be called comix and most of the rest have nonsensical, free-associative narratives. Collage and full-page illustration mix with...
...somewhat smaller scale, but with no less attention to detail (dig those beveled corners!), "Project: Telstar" (AdHouse Books; 184 pp.; $16.95) features robot and space stories by a group of cartoonists not normally associated with science fiction. Gregory Benton creates a credible New York during the last days of Earth. Gigantic floods aren't enough to make some people move: they still buy toilet paper and pull giant worms off each other. Other contributors (there are over 25) only tangentially refer to space. Mark Burriur's "Piano Music" tells of a lonely piano teacher and the painting of outer space...
...Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; 290 pp.; $9.95) continues the series of SPX anthologies that have become comix' greatest annual bargain. You can even (maybe) write it off on your taxes since it's published by the non-profit CBLDF - an organization that provides legal assistance to comix professionals with First Amendment troubles. The book appears in tandem with the Small Press Expo (SPX), an annual convention for alternative comix publishers that takes place every September. (It's happening this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland. See the SPX website for details...
...tantalizing question asked both by and of Chris Ware, the lauded comix author of "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth." The question appears in the form of two new books by Ware, "Quimby the Mouse," (Fantagraphics Books; 68pp.; $24.95) and "The Acme Novelty Date Book" (Drawn & Quarterly; 208 pp.; $39.95). The first collects the author's published works from the early 1990s, while he was still a student. The "Date Book" contains excerpts from the artist's sketchbooks kept between 1986 and 1995. While the hyper-self-conscious formal works use comix as a complex exploration of such fundamental human...
...second generation of "underground" comix artists of the mid 1980s, Brown has gone from absurdist humor ("Ed the Happy Clown") to confessional autobiography ("I Never Liked You") to adapting the Gospels, to a fictional series with all-gibberish dialogue. His latest project, "Louis Riel," (Drawn and Quarterly; 24 pp; $2.95) the tenth and final issue of which has just arrived, was yet another radical shift in subject. Although choosing to do a biography of a 19th century mystic and rabble rouser known primarily in Canada is another test of his audience's loyalty, those who have remained with Chester Brown...