THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS
There are some pieces I like. I’m a sucker for superhero parody, and Eric Haven turns in a fine example of the form, with overwrought pulp-pastiche art, damsels getting blown serendipitously out of their clothes, and the furry hero Mongoose locked in eternal battle with evil reptiles. Michael Kupperman’s werewolf-battles-mutant-flower piece showcases his stilted yet precise surrealism, even if it lacks the satirical bite of his best work. Clearly a fan of children’s-book illustration, Barry includes several pieces that point to that world, the best of which is a lovely fable in concentrated watercolor dyes by Eleanor Davis (who also painted the dust jacket), filled with appealingly ghoulish monstrosities that seem to have waltzed out of Bosch by way of Jeff Smith’s Bone.
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There’s a ton of fine work in Front Forty Press’s Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture, a coffee-table collection of pieces on the title themes by 74 visual artists and solo musicians, ten bands, and a Web site. In the “Apocalypse” section, painter Till Gerhard’s “Pink Apocalypse“ depicts seven apparently undead kids, knee-deep in water while pink light seems to rain down around them—a funny, classically composed conflation of gay utopia and zombie Armageddon. Emilio Perez’s “Born All Over” shows swirling, goopy abstractions mingling and rushing together, with twisted faces almost but not quite taking shape in the muck. Over in “Rapture,” Francesca Sundsten’s oil-on-canvas “Birdland“ is a serenely creepy mix of Magritte, Boccaccio, and Audubon—a nude, bird-headed woman in a natural landscape, surrounded by formally posed, rather dead-looking fowl.
Edited by Jacob Covey
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