Cartoons Books

Sarah Boxer is a staff writer at the New York Times who has covered the cultural beat
for the past few years, often with dry humor. In her career at the paper, she has done
almost everything, from writing obituaries to working as an editor of the Book Review. Her new paperback, IN THE FLOYD ARCHIVES: A PSYCHO-BESTIARY, is not a
coffee table book, but a volume designed perhaps for the smaller kind of end tables to
be found psychiatric waiting rooms.
By creating "Bunnyman" as a patient (and apparent alter-ego) seeing "Dr. Floyd,"
Boxer takes on classic Freudian concepts, lampooning (yet perhaps at a subconscious
level paying tribute to) the power and influence of psychoanalytic thought and practice.
In another sense, it is about the conflict between the rational Ego represented by Dr.
Floyd, and the instinctual Id represented by Bunnyman, as well as a series of other
animals.
If IN THE FLOYD ARCHIVES is comedy with footnotes, the type of clever novelty
that might appeal to fans of early Woody Allen or Jules Feiffer, it is not surprising,
since Boxer says she published her first cartoon at the precocious age of eleven, and
read Freud as a teenager growing up in Denver, Colorado. There, she would leaf
through her father's copies of the New Yorker, no doubt reading the cartoons, her
only direct exposure to East Coast intellectualism prior to the undergraduate degree in
Philosophy from Harvard that resulted in her transplantation to the East. (She
currently divides her time between New York City and Cambridge, Massachussetts.)
[from The Idler, http://www.the-idler.com]

This is a truly original look at Freudian psychology whose very title obviously comes from Janet Malcolm's In The Freud Archives, published several years ago and excerpted in The New Yorker. It's a wonderful, entertaining, parody on core Freud. There is a serious and highly educational message in this work, but it doesn't take itself with the typical, ponderous seriousness that afflicts other work on the subject. Boxer would make one great teacher.

Sarah Boxer has a gift for twists, turns, ins and outs of an outrageous set of characters. Floyd is to comic culture what jazz was to Mondrian -- inventive, subversive and inspiring. How could a journalist from the NY Times have such a fertile mind and imagination to put this work together?? Moneyman, through his depression and search for his mom, is hilarilously drawn, phyically and in character. If you like Thurber or Spiegelman, this one's for you.

My father, brought a copy of this book home in 1974 ... and gave it to me. I was 10 years old. The edition was copyright 1969. Perhaps he gave it to me because of the cartooning (I was into that) or, perhaps he realized it was an essential lesson I would understand.

The most important lessons it taught me were ... (and I hope Mr. Floyd will feel I got it right) 1. you don't bring someone into the group only to isolate them with unique references, prodcedures, patronization, or identification. 2. (And I think Shelby Steele might agree) You do not place someone in a position based on their race ... you place someone based on their skills and commitment to excellence. The minute you place someone on the job for any reason OTHER than an objective assessment of skill, you sentence them to perpetual separation, disdain, disrespect (on a human level) and elimination by their coworkers. 3. We often hold and apply culture stereotypes which, in fact, cannot be applied universally. Each person is unique ... there can be no assumptions as to upbringing, education, political or religious beliefs ... nor should there be exclusion of those unique cultural characteristics of an individual (unless they are inconducive to the workplace).

This book delivers these lessons (and others) with humor, gentle sarcasm ... and a hint of anger and disappointment (which serve to make us realize the consequences of misguided selective policies).

Age 10 is a GREAT age to begin learning these lessons. The copy I STILL HAVE, was $1.95. But, it is essential for anyone - at any age - of ANY race, religion, or cultural uniqueness (which today includes sexual preference).

The bottomline ... this book is STILL relevant TODAY!!! almost 30 years later. I haven't seen the new edition yet ... perhaps the cartoons now show computers on the office desks which weren't there in 1969 ... if not, it really doesn't matter - you won't notice.

Buy this book and share it until the pages begin falling out. And as you move from place to place in life and sell your old books, keep this one always.

America has finally admitted its racism and in some corporate circles, a concerted attempt is being made to address it and reduce it as much as possible. Often racism is the result of ignorance and insensitivity. Integration is a Bitch is right on target in addressing racism with insight and humor! Every CEO or office manager with a culturally diverse staff should read this provocative book!

...as a Black-white collar worker have having willingly and concientiously taken part in America's leading social preoccupation..an experiment called 'Integration'...I am compelled to assess my total experience by saying ...Integration is a Bitch!

What a great and lovely manga!

"Iono-sama Fanatics" is a sweet and funny romantic yuri comedy with plenty of loveable characters and high quality humor.
The art is absolutely fantastic, Miyabi-sensei's style is really wonderful.

The printing and paper quality are also very good.

If you like yuri/shoujo-ai you really can't miss this one!

A lot of fun with memorable characters. And the quality of the artwork as well as the printing is excellent.

Iono-sama Fanatics is a light-hearted manga in which a queen surrounds herself with a harem of beautiful women who all adore her for her good nature. They follow her around while she attempts to find new women to add to her harem. The art is lovely, and Infinity Studios deserves credit for keeping the original intent of the book intact in translation. The only glaring change is that a Japanese TV show reference is changed to "The L Word", which is jarring considering all other obscure Japanese references are translated and explained, but it was the only time in the book where I noticed an editorial decision that seemed out of place.

The physical quality of this volume is also fantastic. Instead of the cheap paper that companies like Tokyopop and ADV Manga use, the paper in this volume is high-quality. You can tell that Infinity really cares about the manga.

The story is sweet and amusing, and shows the love that Iono-sama has for all the women who follow her. I'm looking forward to the second volume.

Did you see that the comics 11/27-12/31 are comics from the years 1987-1992? That's because Charles Schulz took a five week break for the first time. But it's still a good book and it will be like that in the Complete Peanuts 1997-1998 in 2015 I guess.

One the best books with Charlie Brown's failures, Rerun's attempts at getting away from school, Snoopy's encounters with General Washington at Valley Forge. Its a good collectible. One of the best peanuts books. Although its like Peanuts 2000, only 2 or 3 strips are the same.

All of Sparky's strip from 1997 in full color! Plus 2 from 1996 as an added bonus.

Included are strips where: Rerun gets suspended from kindergarden *twice!, the Literary Ace geting help from Lucy, a look at Valley Forge and WWI, Olaf and Andy's quest for Spike, Charlie Brown getting a love leter...

Let's face it: Charles 'Sparky' Schulz was great. This book belongs in any fan's collection.

"For Better Or For Worse" is one of the greatest portraits of a family to ever grace the English language. This book is a wonderful look back at fifteen years of wit, warmth, sadness, and joy. In her work, Johnston doesn't flinch at telling us honestly how she views the world and her readers are all much the better for it. To read about the Pattersons is to read about life.

I love Lynn's work, because I, as a mother of three, can easily relate to it, and pretend that Ellie is me. My kids love it to, and often borrow it from me. For Better Or For Worse it a great strip for all ages.

Funny look at golfing. One has to have a sense of humor to
play the game anyway and these cartoons show the humorous
truisms associated with the "game."

This is a great little golf book with a great group of golf cartoons covering just about every aspect of the game. I produce a newsletter for our local club and I intend to use some of the material in the book in our monthly publication. Neat book and really good price.

This book "Just Fore Laughs" is filled with delightful cartoons about the world of golf. I think everybody that plays the game of golf will find him/her self in one or more sections of the book. The quotations that go with cartoons are cute and appropriate for the cartoon ... for example, the section on Seniors shows Beetle Bailey's General Halftrack leaping out of bed and proclaiming that he feels young and strong and that nothing will stop him from succeeding on this day while his wife stays in bed and says "You're playing golf, right?" The quotation accompanying the cartoon is by Michael de Montaigne and says "Let us take care that age does not make more wrinkles on our spirit than on our face." Another cartoon is Jeff MacNelly's Shoe hitting his ball into a water hazard while his fiend says his swing is instant bogey ... just add water. The accompanying quotation is from Henry Wassworth Longfellow .. "From the waterfall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water." This is a gift type book and it's pretty thick for its' type with more that 150 pages and a lot or golf cartoons. It's priced very well at $14.95 so it makes a great gift for anybody that plays golf and realizes how absurd the game can be sometimes.

Speed Bump is the next best thing to The Far Side - it is one of those smart and funny comics that make you think and laugh all at the same time. If you're the kind of person that cuts out comics and sticks them up at the office, this is your type of comic.

Coverly has the book broken up into themes and has a little introduction (one written by Rick Kirkman, the guy who draws "Baby Blues.") These are all clever (especially the one in which he describes a typical cartoonist's day).

Well, you'll have to excuse me now, I'm off to the scanner to make a few copies of some cartoons for the office!

Dave Coverly is one of the most underrated cartoonists out there. I competely agree with the previous review, in that he shares the same creative writing style as Larson, but his illustrations are superior.

The puns are numerous and outrageous... and will have you actually laughing out loud. Dave's brilliant artwork fits the subject matter perfectly. I have a number of comic collections in my library and this one now resides in my favorites section. Do yourself a favor and pick this book up. Better yet, call your local paper and demand that they run Speed Bump.

Are you a fan of "The Far Side?" Do you wish that Gary Larson was still doing that comic? I'm sad that he's gone too, but he sure produced a host of people to carry the load. Some have nowhere near the amount of imagination that Larson did, but one person definitely does. That's Dave Coverly, author of "Speed Bump." I just read through one of his latest collections, called Just One %$#@ Speed Bump After Another... and it's yet another winner.

Coverly is the closest I have seen to Larson's creativity in the one-panel (or sometimes small multi-panel) comic strip, bringing his characters to life and making wonderful jokes. Sometimes, Coverly will take a familiar phrase, and give it just one twist to the left to make you laugh out loud (such as one comic in this book where one baby sitting on a park bench tells another baby not to worry. "We *all* get thrown out with the bathwater from time to time.") Other panels have plays on words that sometimes make you groan, but always make you laugh (the head of a thesaurus publishing company telling an employee "Bob, you're fired, axed, canned, sacked, booted, dismissed, terminated and let go.")

This is the first collection I've read, so I don't know if the layout's the same in all of them, but this one is divided into sections regarding children, animals, gender differences in society, work, the meaning of life, and then a hodge-podge of unrelated subjects. The jokes are always clever, pop culture references abound ("Diane's date with a Headline News Anchor: 'Weird...didn't we just have this conversation half an hour ago, Tom?'") and even the introductions to the chapters are quite witty. The chapter regarding workplace comics begins with him describing a typical day on the comic creation assembly line, catching a bus with some lesser cartoonists while some (like Scott Adams) drive by in limos. Coverly doesn't avoid philosophy either, with one panel having God tell an angel "C'mon, it'll be fun! I'll throw on some stars, pop in a few planets, drum up a life form or two, and this place will be hoppin'!" The caption is, of course, "The Big Shebang Theory."

As for the artwork, Coverly's work is quite distinctive. He doesn't have any set "characters" like Larson did; instead all of them look quite different. Some have big noses that jut from their faces, while others have little ones. The eyes are different, heck even the body shapes are quite unique. Even the inevitable James Earl Jones comic (you can probably guess along what lines it runs) actually has him look vaguely like James Earl Jones!

This is a great collection of strips from the last couple of years. It was published in late 2005, and contains the winner of last book's caption contest, where you get to write the punchline! This year's deadline was April 7, 2006, so I missed it, but the winner will appear in the newspaper sometime during the year. "Speed Bump" is one of the funniest one-panel comics around these days, and Gary Larson's legacy is well in hand. Pick this one up today.

R. Crumb and Charles Bukowski, now Crumb and Kafka. The drawings illuminate the text in a way that Kafka would have loved. I will never see Kafka again, except through Crumb's vision.

If you like Crumb, or if you like Kafka, find this book.

Kafka was a complex man whose genius is inseparable from his huge neuroses. So is Robert Crumb. Put the two together, as this book does, and the upshot is a book in which the distinction between author Crumb and subject Kafka tends to dissolve. The book is just as much about the one as the other. It's no mistake that Crumb is drawn (sorry for the bad pun) to Kafka.

At one level, the book is a primer on the life and work of Franz Kafka, with Crumb lavishly illustrating David Zane Mairowitz's text (warning: the text is strangely loaded with typos). The highlights of Kafka's life, including his stormy relationship with his father, his alienation from Prague, the city in which he spent most of his life, his difficulties with sexual intimacy, his self-loathing, his work at an insurance agency, and his struggle with tuberculosis, are all chronicled. Moreover, synapses of some of his best work--"The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "The Burrow," "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," "Letter to His Father," The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika--are provided. Someone who knows nothing or little about Kafka will get a good orientation from reading this book.

But it's Crumb's pen-and-ink illustrations that make the book. They're eerie, dark, and at times actually frightening: perfect glimpses of Kafka's demons as well as Crumb's. In fact, Crumb and Kafka share many of the same demons: an intense need for comfort by women, but a deep-seated hostility to them; an equally intense need for public approval, coupled with an intense contempt for the crowd; a fascination with the usually unnoticed weirdness of the ordinary; a competing attraction and repulsion to the artistic, bohemian crowd; seething but repressed sexuality; a periodic yearning to disappear, to be punished, to be redeemed and reborn through suffering; an alternately bewildered and enraged dislike of Nietzschean proportions of the way in which popular culture cheapens existence (Crumb & Mairowitz's take on touristy Prague, pp. 174-75, is priceless); and a need to confess some of their darkest secrets, through their art, to the very public they disdain. In many ways, both Crumb and Kafka are hunger artists: they refuse to partake of the status quo not necessarily because they're ascetics, but simply because they don't find anything in it that whets their appetites. In gazing at Crumb's brilliant illustrations of Kafka, one can't help but think that this work, like so much of what Crumb does, is autobiographical.

Is it intentionally so? Does Crumb understand the deep connection between himself and Kafka? Is the book intended, at least on one level, as a gag: a book about Crumbka? I dunno, although I suspect that Crumb knows exactly what he's doing. But what I do know is that Kafka is about more than just Kafka. And that's what makes doubly intriguing.

Michael Sidlofsky

Kafka scholar David Mairowitz and underground comics artist Robert Crumb team up to provide a fascinating window into Franz Kafka's brilliantly troubled mind. Mairowitz's text provides historical context and biographical information, including valuable insight into the Jewish folkloric roots of Kafka's fiction. Crumb's characteristically graphic illustrations highlight the horrific and humorous elements within Kafka's work. Together, the author and illustrator provide summaries of K's best-known short stories and novels, encouraging the reader to delve into the originals. The book's only flaw lies in Mairowitz's unfortunately condescending attitude towards Kafka scholars and fans.

This is the latest instalment (as of 11/12/06) in a cute, fun series. While every book is important and well done, this is my favorite. There are several plot developments that keep you hooked and waiting for the next book. I would reccomend this to girls interested in a funny read with plenty of romance.

This manga is the best manga I've ever read. It's funny, and you can get some history info in it (educational part). For manga fans that like more superhero-ish mangas, try Pretear or Tokyo Mew Mew. Saint Tail is also a good choice. Buy this manga!!

While the whole series is excellent, I have to say volume five is the best so far. The story starts to get very emotional at this point, with several twists in the plot. Definitely worth buying.

This is a wonderfully designed news strip reprint book - hefty, formidable, aesthetically pleasing in every regard. I've been a Krazy Kat fan for many, many years, and I couldn't be happier with this purchase. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain)

Often the unexpected makes life worth living. Day by day, we roll along acquiescing in the eternal routine that inexorably mashes down time like a rolling pin over muffin dough. Then suddenly a protrusion. Wham! Something interrupts the seemingly unimpediable passage of the inevitable. Pull back the dough. A diamond. A multi-karatted glittering sparkler. Endorphins rush to pleasure centers. Eyes bulge. Tongue wags. Hopefully a full stomach maintains consciousness. If not, then plop and give in to the ecstasy. Such an event doesn't occur often. Something from nowhere has disrupted harsh workaday realities. Hope! Meaning! Such startling events probably filled the lives of Krazy Kat Konnoiseurs the nanosecond their retinas processed this sumptuous delectable volume of Golden Fleece daily strips. And who can blame them? This enormous hardcover coffee table sized miracle delights with every page. And who knew? Fantagraphics spread no rumors about printing dailies, perhaps to keep fans from vaporizing into submissive joy. The cover itself is an aesthetic wonder well worth a few million eye scans. But the strips inside, laid out like billboards two to a page, emblazoned almost in original size, might make some feel like they didn't pay enough for this shock to the system.

Krazy Kat dailies of any kind remain elusive. A few sparse collections exist compliments of Stinging Monkey (who apparently have more installments planned) and Pacific Comics club. Fans of George Herriman's Kat can hope with collective ferocious zeal that this volume presages infinite follow-ups.

Though the subtitle of this collection, stamped across the cover marquee-style, reads "The Panoramic Dailies of 1920," the strips actually date from 1911 to 1921. Three sections trisect the book: "The Emancipated Kat" includes early strips from subterranean Dingbat-era excursions. These reveal a very different Kat and mouse than later evolutions. "The Liberated Kat" jumps to 1914 when Krazy received the blessing of a solo strip extricated from "The Family Upstairs. Basement no more. I am Kat, hear me roar. These pun-filled often self-referential strips display the development of Herriman's new favorite characters. The final section of strips, "Flights of Fanciful Freedom," dives right into the panoramic strips advertised up front. They represent comic eye candy of the highest order. As luscious as the Sundays, only smaller, they reveal the strip in almost full stride. Surrealism and off-frame references abound. Among the works is the much discussed "Poor poor Injin" strip from May 24, 1920. Once again puns and linguistic peregrinations emanate from the text. Ignatz's ubiquitous brick appears with stunning and symbolic frequency. Offisa Pupp and his jail have not yet become mainstays, as they did in the 1930s and 1940s, but themes point in that direction. The quality never staggers. Krazy Kat's reputation heightens with each flop of the sometimes unwieldy pages (prepare ample space for gazing). And if that wasn't enough, a final section reprints the masterful 1922 program of the Krazy Kat jazz pantomime. Given vast space, Herriman's artwork reveals all its subtle beauty and charm. Prepare to be overwhelmed.

So did "The Kat Who Walked in Beauty" interrupt Fantagraphics's ongoing printing of the Krazy Kat Sunday pages? If so, it was worth it. To have numerous dailies spread out like gorgeous landscapes begging for repeated visits will cull any drooling anticipations for Sundays. Let's hope Fantagraphics plans more volumes of amazing Krazy Kat daily strips.

This large format book provides Krazy Kat dailies in nearly newspaper size print. After buying the Fantagraphics sunday series that are available it is interesting to view and read these larger format cartoons. The larger size adds an additional "dimension" that you don't get from the smaller format books. The majority of the book is derived from the series published over 9 months in 1920 with smaller sections from very early days. This is a different Kat than the Krazy Kat of 1920 and later but it helps to show how the cartoon character evolved. Reading this makes me hope Fantagraphics continues to put out more.