Fantagraphics Books, $2.95
Short Review: Sick. Very very sick. If you can withstand it, recommended.
Al Columbia is probably best known as the guy who drew issues 3 & 4 of Alan Moore's Big Numbers, and then had a nervous breakdown, and made the original art into a mobile. This collection of short stories is as good an indicator of how much he had to get off his mind as that act; the word Deranged is the first to come to mind, followed by Sick. Mr. Columbia has a fixation with mouths and eyes, not to mention a predilection for drawing nameless organic surfaces, like implausible internal organs, and cloven hooves, together with the sort of legs usually associated with satyrs. There's murder, more murder, rape, mutilation, more murder, and so on. It's not a happy book by any standards, but there's a story inside each atrocity exhibition, and I was never compelled to put the book down. If you can stomach it, it's one of very few things of this type (the only other comparison is with Doghead, also by Al Columbia).
Andrew These reviews are copyright the authors