If I were to draw a comparison between the music industry and the comics book industry, I would call Donald Simpson the Adrian Belew of comics. Like Belew, he knows everyone, has been ubiquitous throughout his long career, yet is virtually unknown to the average consumer.

To fully approach the complexity of the Bizarre Heroes universe that Simpson has created, you must first understand his beginnings in the field. In 1984, Simpson burst upon the comic scene with Megaton Man, a Kitchen Sink title that showcased Simpson’s gift for parody and bombastic page layouts. Obviously geared towards an audience that was brought up on 1960s superhero comics, Megaton Man was a satire on everything that Marvel was about, right down to the lettering and alliterative captions. Unlike Alan Moore’s 1963, Simpson was not out to recreate house ads, Stan’s Soapbox or attack his subjects directly. His style suggested a love for the era and the genre, but also a wish to use it as a springboard for new directions.

Megaton Man’s own origin tale was a composite of several Marvel and DC heroes. The Marvel style (in its glory days) was used as a framework, and from actual character parodies, Simpson expanded and updated the storyline, incorporating well-known film stars and other cultural icons. Still, it didn’t take a genius to figure out who The Megatropolis Quartet and Wall Man were supposed to be, and this was not lost on the real Marvel Comics who promptly threatened to sue Simpson if he continued to feature the fantastic foursome prominently. The creator saved himself a lengthy court battle by having the group split up, yet the individual members continued to appear separately.

After a 10-issue run, Simpson ended the series to devote his full attention to his new book, Border Worlds, an erotic “serious” science-fiction comic that had begun as a back-up feature in Megaton Man. Alas, Border Worlds was not the rollicking success that Simpson had hoped for, and it was cancelled after seven issues. It was revived as a one-shot years later.

Despondent over the failure of Border Worlds, Simpson began to branch out. He did short features in DC’s Wasteland and Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. He drew a six-issue adaptation of the 1933 film King Kong for Fantagraphics’ short-lived Monster Comics line and even revived his most popular creation for a three-issue mini-series and a series of one-shots starring various supporting characters. He was right at home as letterer and occasional inker for 1963 and had a go at the Image boys in Splitting Image.

The frustrated sexuality evident in such sequences as the gratuitous spanking panel in Pteroman finally gave way to a slew of hardcore sex comics under the pseudonym Anton Drek. The first of these, the infamous Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut, was the single best selling comic Simpson had ever produced, and is a mainstay of the Eros line.

Now Don is back doing what he does best. Although Bizarre Heroes (which began as one of those many one-shots as far back as 1990) does feature many of the characters from the old Megaton Man cast, Simpson has taken the superhero parody into new dimensions this time. There are touches of drama, in-jokes at the industry, the fan mentality and a realistic time continuity rarely found in the types of comics that Bizarre Heroes parodies. Some issues vary between straight six-panel pages and text-heavy sections that must be turned sideways to be read. The entire series is replete with nearly endless plot threads involving dozens of characters and concepts. Issue #10 contained nothing but full-page spreads, perhaps a jibe at the current crop of “hot” hacks who try to make every page a sure sale as original art by eschewing actual storytelling and instead featuring major characters posing in every panel.

The new series is Simpson’s first venture into self-publishing, under the Fiasco Comics label. He has had a small but loyal following throughout his career and unfortunately commercial success has thus far eluded him with this project. The now defunct Canadian distributor Andromeda was even unable to raise orders after doing a feature on the comic in their monthly catalogue. This may be due to the relative obscurity of some of the story references. Issues #9 and the latest, #11, offer a scathing spoof of Steve Gerber’s well-known battle with Marvel over Howard the Duck, as a long-haired, bearded barfly tries to recapture success as a comics writer with a 60,000-page graphic novel that will reintroduce the character of Gower Goose. Readers who weren’t around for the heyday of Gerber’s duck might be baffled. Simpson may be aiming too much of his humor at readers of his age group. Though there may be a lot of us, others may feel alienated. Of course, he should not change his vision to pander to anyone, even if it would mean an increase in sales. His problem may just be that superhero fans don’t want black and white comics and alternative fans don’t want heroes. In any case, Simpson doesn’t seem to care. Like his Fox cartoon namesake, he makes reference to many pieces of cultural trivia without worrying if everyone is going to get the joke. This is what puts Bizarre Heroes on a level above most humor comics.

There are also complex interpersonal relationships and characters that have a serious side, like the brooding anti-hero, The Meddler. Megaton Man is back as well, but he is only a small part of this series. Don clearly doesn’t want to type-cast himself with one character, particulary one that could easily dominate the story and leave Simpson stuck in a rut. Luckily, this doesn’t seem possible at this point. Don is bursting with ideas, some very clever, others which seem completely insane. As Dave Sim rightly said in his solicited testimonial for the book, “It’s not what it appears to be on the surface.”

Because each issue is different, enjoying the series is nearly impossible unless one reads every issue in sequence from the beginning. Even then, a full knowledge of Don’s previous work is nearly essential in order to be clued in to the humor. Once again, the in-joke mentality may deter some readers, particulary those with short attention spans. Like many alternatives, it is also hard to get in some areas and, because of the nature of the series, missing even one issue can leave a fan totally lost. To combat this, there is a mail order service, but as we all know, that reaches only a small fraction of the buying public. As long as he can keep his head above water, Simpson clearly has enough ideas to keep Bizarre Heroes going indefinitely. For those few who appreciate it, this is good news.

One of the best things about Doofus is that so many people are disgusted by it. Like some creepy junior high school kid desparate for laughs, Rick Altergott astounds readers with his arsenal of “grosser-than-gross” dementia; but unlike the uncalculated classroom masturbation of those notebook scrawling pubescent animals, Altergott renders his almost painfully lame stories with a degree of craft that approaches the fecundity of Wally Wood. Fully realized and self satirizing, Doofus envelopes the concerns of juvenile wit and flair and rearticulates them in a beautiful state of deformed grace. That so many people would feel molested and repulsed by Doofus only adds to Altergott’s power.

In Doofus no. 2 (subtitled: Exposing the Sex Lives of American Creeps!), Altergott lends an almost sprawling, Kubrick-like pace to disgusting tales of depraved, dismaying assholes and their horrifying sexual malaise, giving the reader a vague feeling of having been prematurely dissapointed as they read. Therein lies the joke: the reader enjoys hating the experience of reading Doofus, indulging in a kind of sadomasochistic ecstasy usually reserved for unintenionally bad television. Thus Altergott makes hatred, negativity, and cynicism beautiful.

Any attempt to summarize the sordid, disturbing stories in Doofus no. 2 would be completely pointless because they operate on such a multi-level, hyper-critical dimension that they sever rational explanation and effectively resist summary. These are Altergott’s strengths as a story-teller and as an artist. The inwardly subversive mode of communication and craft, applied to lame, prepubescent humor, makes Doofus a strange and scathing caricature of insecurity and the need to be loved. Rick Altergott is the funniest cartoonist alive.

Tony Consiglio is a Queens, N.Y.-based cartoonist who has been quietly putting out one of the most charming minicomics of the last five years. His ongoing series, Double Cross, of which there are 11 issues so far, is a satisfying blend of longer, “realistic” pieces whose simple humanity even Harvey Pekar would be hard-pressed to match, and short, humorous pieces that might give Sam Henderson a run for his money.

Consiglio’s greatest strength is his ability to imbue his comics with a rawness and sincerity that keeps the reader entertained and coming back for more. “Deliver us from...”, a story serialized in issues four through six, is striking for the uncomplicated manner in which its story unfolds and the contrasting moral complexity that resonates from all the leading characters. Even though Tony, the protagonist, is left taking the rap for his brother Johnny’s drug-dealing, and Johnny flees the state with Tony’s love interest in tow, there are no bad guys in this story: Johnny cuts too tragic a figure not to evoke reader sympathy, and Tony is simply a victim of a fraternal love that blinds him to his brother’s true nature.

Of course, some readers might find the shorter works in Double Cross of greater value since they are more experimental and generally quite hilarious. Notable examples include “My Job,” a three-page slice-of-lifer illustrated in the style of Maus, and “Cute Girls,”a commentary by Consiglio on why “he truly fucking despise[s] cute girls.”

If Consiglio’s art style continues to develop as it has in the first 11 issues of Double Cross, it is certain that he will one day make the leap to regular comics format. For now, his minis are of sufficient entertainment value that being called up to the “Big Leagues” might do more harm than good. Send him your money, won’t you, and see what you’ve been missing.

North America is suffering an ongoing drought where anthologies are concerned. For the last fifteen years or so, RAW and Weirdo have represented the two poles of non-mainstream anthologies — arty avant-garde and wise-ass underground, respectively, to use the most gross generalizations. Yet these two have recently met their demise and no anthology has really come along yet to take their place. Many good anthologies have come and gone before they had a chance to make much impact: witness Buzz, Snake Eyes, and Hyena, to name just a few. Zero Zero has only just been thrown out of the nest and is just beginning to test its wings. In the meantime, if the first two issues of Volume 2 are any indication, Drawn & Quarterly is shaping up to be the anthology most likely to fill part of that void in the coming quarters and, hopefully, years.

In terms of the RAW/Weirdo dichotomy, Drawn & Quarterly certainly falls in the former’s camp. Since the anthology’s inception as a magazine in 1990, D&Q has featured a mixture of autobiographical comics, arty graphic design-inspired work, and full-color comics from a fairly close-knit group of artists from Canada and the States. After a brief hiatus, D&Q is back with a new format, even higher production values than before, a commitment to its eponymous publishing schedule, and an expanded, international roster of cartoonists.

D&Q Volume 2, #2 builds on the promise of the first issue, offering more Tardi, adding Jacques Loustal, another giant of European comics, and presenting a lengthy new story by David Mazzucchelli. As it so happens, the impact of each piece in the new issue seems to be closely related to its length: Eric Drooker’s one-pager and Maurice Vellekoop’s two-pager are certainly the least impressive works on display. Drooker’s six panel slice-of-life is overburdened by clichéd images of nurturing — the old woman watering plants, feeding cats and birds — which are then bluntly contrasted with the loneliness and horror (the tell-tale tattoo on her arm) of her own existence. While Vellekoop uses an interesting device of having his comic read in two ways — simultaneously as a regular comic narrative and as two parallel storylines — he fails to develop it in any interesting direction, opting instead for random permutations of his usual themes of sex, opera, and camp.

Loustal and Fromental’s “The Ghost of Whitechapel” is a brilliant and sordid tale of decadence set in mid-century Europe. Playboy Morel Cox finds himself ducking into a London toy store late one night while fleeing a bunch of thugs. Once inside, he finds himself being led to a dingy basement projection room, where a grainy amateur porn reel sets into motion a series of devastating revelations. This pure pulp tale of random karma is perfectly matched to Loustal’s sensual line, his full-bodied figures, and his mixture of earth tones and primary colors. Loustal almost manages to tell the story with colors alone: the alluring, overripe, amber glow of the toy store window; the dilapidated brick of the stairs down to the makeshift porn theater; the cool gray-green and black and white of the screening room —suggesting the dingy haze of long-suppressed memories; and finally Cox’s fiery red shock of hair in the last panel.

If the comic has a weakness, it lies in an over-reliance on narration. Madame Topfer’s recounting of her misfortunes is the most static part of the comic. Still, Fromental’s text, as translated by Helge Dascher, is full of wry humor and pulp hyperbole; I think any dime-novel writer would be proud to have penned a line such as the one Mrs. Topfer utters when she describes having fled Europe by boat only to find that “unfortunately evil floats better than mercy!”

Like the best pulp fiction, “The Ghost of Whitechapel” manages to transcend its genre boundaries via the visceral knot in the stomach it provokes through Cox’s unexpected predicament. Behind the sleaziness of the affairs detailed in this comic lies a deeper, existential uneasiness about our helplessness in the face of chance and fate: How often do choices we make at random — being in a certain city on a certain night, entering an inconspicuous toy store — end up having a profound effect on our lives?

Jacques Tardi presents another installment of his World War I series, “It Was the War of the Trenches,” which was drawn throughout the ’80s. Another powerful story from this series kicked off the first issue of Volume 2, and I hope that an English-language paperback edition will be in the works down the road. Though I have not read the original French version, the translation of this story struck me as awkward at times, and at some points the dialogue even seemed to run out of sequence (i.e. page 38).

The comics in Tardi’s series are not conventional war stories, full of battles and important decisions made at the highest echelons of power; rather they deal with the consequences of those decisions on the common foot soldiers who were offered the choice of fighting and being surely slaughtered, or fleeing and being just as certainly executed by their own police.

The tone of these stories is intense: they are gut-churning yet strangely detached meditations on war as it is experienced and processed by these anonymous soldiers. Their stories are marginalized, even by the space of the comic itself: Tardi has divided each page into three horizontal panels, individually recalling the sweep of cinemascope war epics; collectively recalling with bitter irony the French flag and its promise of Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity. Within these wide spaces, the protagonist is often overwhelmed by the landscape around him. Carnage and destruction stretch in every direction: buildings leveled, trees charred, bodies mutilated. One of the most grotesque images is the recurring view of a horse’s head and forelegs dangling from one of the few standing trees. Images like this one take on an allegorical intensity that is reminiscent of Goya’s “Disasters of War” prints, a work to which this series in fact bares numerous resemblances, both in theme and in composition.

Tardi’s soldiers wander around in a daze, separated from their troops, having no idea where they are going. By some absurd logic, it seems that once they are alone, they are destined to remain alone until they die. If two people meet in this comic, it is inevitable that one of them must die while the other stands by and watches, able only to bear witness to a final, compulsive testimony that always culminates in a cry for mother at the moment of death. There is no solace and no salvation of any sort. “What do you make of a religion that sells itself through some naked guy all beat up and nailed to two planks of wood?” asks a dying soldier of his comrade and the mounted cross behind him. “It Was the War of the Trenches” puts forth a definitive refutation of the myth that there are no atheists in a foxhole: in Tardi’s war, there is only power, metal, and meat, and the only place for religion is in the disjointed ravings of a dying man.

“It Was the War of the Trenches” offers a devastating view of the effects of war on all life, but an important subtext —and one of the series’ most unsettling implications— is that in the end, war is just business as usual. The playing field may be more dramatic, but the players are the same: A small elite is in power, and the mass of people are used as pawns in their games with no regard for their own welfare. And if they dare deny that power, they will be crushed by the stooges of the elite, in this case the military police.

While Tardi and Loustal/Fromental’s works are excellent and live up to their usual standards, my favorite comic of the issue, and indeed one of the best comics I have read in a while, is David Mazzucchelli’s “Rates of Exchange.” Mazzucchelli’s reputation as an artist dates back to his work in superhero comics. He then surprised everyone by leaving the mainstream to self-publish much more personal, literary comics in his series Rubber Blanket. While those comics have been very good, and Mazzucchelli has shown a consistent determination to improve and experiment, his writing has to a certain extent lagged behind his art. “Discovering America,” (Rubber Blanket #2) for instance, showed great formal and thematic inventiveness, but I found the Frankenstein-monster allegory of “Big Man” (Rubber Blanket #3), to be fairly trite overall.

Many readers will be aware that Mazzucchelli’s last big project was his adaptation, along with Paul Karasik, of Paul Auster’s postmodern private eye novella, City of Glass. I do not know how much being exposed to Auster’s rigorously self-conscious and compelling prose affected Mazzucchelli, or how much it is simply a natural development of his talent, but I think “Rates of Exchange” is the first comic where Mazzucchelli’s potential as a writer has truly caught up with his already bountifully evident talent as an artist.

Starting with his written introduction, Mazzucchelli announces a newly found — or at least newly concentrated — preoccupation with that paradoxical commerce in truths and lies that underlies the act of storytelling. He dives into these weighty matters with an almost excessive eagerness, yet his comments underscore a conspicuous lack of similar self-reflection on the part of many other cartoonists who claim to be portraying “truth” and “reality” in their work.

“Rates of Exchange” is a story about travel and rootlessness. It is set in a vividly claustrophobic, cheap hotel in Paris, where various characters cross paths randomly and interact. The story is also set in the very specific milieu of the mostly white, middle-class Europeans and Americans who travel more or less aimlessly from country to country, to see the world; to find or lose themselves; to put off the seemingly inevitable onset of conventional lifestyles. The Japanese couple, in contrast, give more of an impression of being tourists, taking a quick vacation — perhaps a honeymoon — and then returning to their regular lives. At least that is how it seems to the protagonist, Anthony.

As if to poke fun at his own opening remarks, Mazzucchelli tempts us to identify him with the protagonist by giving him a common Italian-American name, and, especially, by plaguing him with a respiratory ailment (Mazzucchelli did a comic about his own asthma in Rubber Blanket #2). Yet we never really get to know this anonymous traveler, save for a few memories he shares with us. We learn of his loneliness, a certain self-loathing, a sense of guilt over the misfortune of others... Ultimately, he remains another dimly remembered but more or less likable character, confused in a jumble of disorganized memories, uncertain motivations, vague suggestions of meaning.

The story reads as a travelogue of sorts, detailing the experiences of a traveler with a naturalist’s precision, yet at the same time it is a work of fiction. Even without the introduction, the presence of an omniscient third-person narrator clearly marks this comic as fiction from the first panel. (In one of the few points where I think he overdoes it, Mazzucchelli even has the narrator speak in the first person here, deliberately undermining his own omniscience.) This sets into motion an impulse to try and make sense of the events and characters in the story. Mazzucchelli frustrates these traditional expectations by constantly shifting pace and perspective. The shape and size of the panels changes with each interaction, each memory. We can’t seem to grab hold of one thread, the comic is too unruly, the characters tangible but too ambiguous to understand. All we have is this multiplicity of stories; this profusion of truths, lies, and misunderstandings. Images, emotions, and impressions flash by with the fleeting tenuousness of everyday life.

For those readers that are not as easily carried away by such metafictional considerations, let me assure you that by any account, Mazzucchelli simply shows himself in top form here. He demonstrates an uncanny ear for speech patterns and interlingual communication that has not been evident in his earlier work. He manages to use French without subtitles yet, I think, make it comprehensible to someone who doesn’t know it. He uses the language to convey personality and background, as well; for example, the charming accent of the Japanese couple (inserting the extra vowel in “meruci” for “merci”) and the horrendous New Jersey French of the part-time concierge, Steve.

The comic is executed in stark black and white, with broad, expressive brush strokes that are not afraid to verge on sloppiness. Mazzucchelli shows a looseness of style that is quite exhilarating, and which flies in the face of the predominant preference in many comics for a clean, immaculate line. He alternates between high-contrast simplicity, as in many of his conversations, and richly evocative detail, as in his images of Paris streets, the cramped hotel staircase, the train station in southern India. The integration of text and art is fluid; every page is laid out differently, yet the threads of the episodic narrative weave themselves together effortlessly, shifting tempo and overcoming sometimes violent jumps in time and space.

While I could point to a number of minor flaws and excesses, overall I cannot recommend “Rates of Exchange” enough, and to top it off, it comes in a package with at least two other great comics. Ironically, my only real criticism of this issue is that, while the cover is adequate, Mazzucchelli’s back cover and endpapers look just awful, both in design and execution — his usually immaculate design sense seems to have failed him this one time...

I cannot fault the editors of Drawn & Quarterly for their production work — everything about the design and layout looks great. I especially like the introductory pages for the longer works: It is great to see something as lowly as a comic provide room to give some background information or introduce the artist. These introductions also slow down the pace of the magazine overall, allotting breathing space to each comic without breaking up the integrity of the whole.

One general criticism I have — and it is really more of a plea — is that I wish the book were longer, adding maybe two more comics of reasonable length. If that were possible, then it would be easier to address my other general criticism, which is that it would be nice to see more new artists being given Drawn & Quarterly’s lavish treatment. I hope it is not too optimistic to suggest that if people start buying Drawn & Quarterly and building up an audience base, the anthology will be able to grow and keep putting out high-quality work by international artists; and that if that happens, it has the potential to eventually reach a broad audience outside the comix scene. In the meantime, we should be happy to be able to hoard it to ourselves.

This book collection of his dream drawings will appeal to certain comics fans on several levels. First, the dreams themselves are bizarre and fascinating (and very well drawn). Also, Dreams is a very interesting book to compare with another illustrated dream journal, Rarebit Fiends. (In my opinion, Dreams is superior.) And most important, Shaw dreams about comics and cartoons a lot —Êprobably as much as Rick Veitch. And judging from his dreams, his knowledge of comics is uncommonly wide. Some of his comics dreams include: a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman by Frank Frazetta, Mr. Peabody and Sherman falling into an abyss, an EC comic about a woman whose father is actually a Martian in disguise, Krazy and Ignatz tumbling out of a folded up painting, reading a comic about himself reading a Spain Rodriguez Trashman comic, a Casper the Ghost lawnmower, “Ghastly” Graham Ingels pages that look like Symbolist etchings, a brutally, realistically violent George McManus cartoon in The Wall Street Journal, a Wally Wood comic featuring a sick horse covered with eyes, an Uncle Scrooge spaceship, ’60s style Clark Kent and Lois Lane in bed together, a copy of Eightball with a cover that looks like ’60s sci-fi abstract book covers, three Green Lanterns smacking each other in a Citizen Kane style mansion, a collaboration between Robert Crumb and one of the Starn twins, a cover of Plop! drawn by Robert Williams, Batman yelling at Shaw for not taking out the garbage, etc. And these are just a few of them.

Like most people, many of Shaw’s dreams are very personal and thus pretty mystifying. But they are curiously engrossing, and despite its steep price, Dreams is a book worth buying and reading.

In the introduction to Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood, Eisner writes, “Neighborhoods have life spans. They begin, evolve, mature and die.” The setting is the subject — almost the protagonist — of the tale that starts with the original landowners, and the changes that began to accelerate around 1870.

The man’s fascination with Dropsie Avenue, of course, goes back to his own youth in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where he attended De Witt Clinton High School and drew his first published work for the school paper: a street scene called “The Forgotten Ghetto.” Eisner hasn’t forgotten that ghetto; indeed, he seems completely in the thrall of that formative experience, for it has dominated his work since he began what might be referred to as his “third career.”

The first career, of course, was the period when he found his greatest popular success with The Spirit Section in the 1940s, and the second career involved the production of training manuals for the military, or other forms of commercial art, during the 1950s and 1960s. Who would have thought that a 55-year-old Eisner would be on the brink of a third career? And that his third career would revolve around the memories and insights of a mature story-teller harkening back to the sights, sounds, and feelings of his youth in the Bronx? In hindsight, after a series of graphic novels set in an urban environment (A Life Force, The Dreamer, To the Heart of the Storm), we know now that the feeling he showed for city life in the Spirit strip was only a hint of what was to come.

Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood begins with a nine-page sequence that is as perfectly conceived and executed as anything Eisner has ever crafted. In 1870, the Van Dropsie family (descendants of the original Dutch settlers) bemoans the division of the remaining small farms into lots. A drunken uncle rages into the night against the English newcomers, and accidentally sets fire to his young niece. This powerful opening segment, which ends with the dead girl’s father exacting immediate justice on the uncle, is both shocking in its sudden violence and sublime in its economy.

The Van Dropsies never recover from this family trauma. They grow reclusive and cut off from developments in the neighborhood, as the new English families build homes all around them. By the early 1900s, Dropsie Avenue has become a “high class” neighborhood primarily peopled by the sons and daughters of the Mayflower. But this does not last long.

The story of New York City at the turn of the century was one of the influx of European immigrants. For a time Uncle Sam’s doors were thrown open, and the poor huddled masses surged through Ellis Island to look for the streets lined with gold. Better neighborhoods like Dropsie Avenue would become desirable to the first generations of those immigrants who had found a measure of financial success in America. Living on Dropsie next to the landed gentry was a conspicuous symbol of success.

Among the forces to shape the social fabric of the city at this time, Eisner shows clannishness as one of the most powerful. When the Irish move in, the English seek new havens; when the Italians move in, the Irish bristle. The ethnicity of the neighborhood changes in waves as the years pass: Germans, Middle Europeans, Jews. Landlords and politicians conspire to re-zone the area, and locate a station for the new elevated railroad line at Dropsie. Multi-family tenements replace private homes in order to accommodate the growing post-World War I population of the inner city. The powers-that-be could care less about the quality of life on the avenue as long as they’ve lined their pockets along the way. The street’s inexorable decline begins.

Finding ways to portray the intertwining forces that play a part in this decline is Eisner’s mission. Carefully building incident upon incident, he lets us see for ourselves how shifting demographic patterns, the profit motive, bureaucratic pigheadedness and changing sexual mores combine with the rising crime during the Prohibition era to drag a good neighborhood into the mud. Eisner is like a social scientist with an uncanny, mature grasp of the way things work in business, politics and interpersonal relations — and the ability to deftly communicate those elements in sequential art form.

“Shit! The whole neighborhood is goin’ downhill,” remarks one resident who is picking up a few dollars shoveling snow during the Depression.

“So’s the whole country!!” another replies. “People are moving out... Times are-a-changing!” Those with sufficient means migrate to Manhattan... Westchester... or Florida. Instead of a destination, Dropsie becomes a way station — and, finally, during the Eisenhower years, a dead end. The only ones who live in the tenements in the 1960s and 1970s are those who have nowhere else to go. If neighborhoods have life spans, then Dropsie toward the end had become something akin to a comatose patient who unaccountably hangs on, though life support has long since been suspended.

Eisner’s principal challenge in tracing the 125-year history of a single community involved finding story-telling strategies to compress the timespan into 170 pages while still involving the reader in well-defined characters and situations. Typically, he rejects the obvious method of creating text-laden chapter divisions to easily delineate the passage of time and fill in the narrative gaps. Nor does he rely on captions — there are only a handful of captions in the entire book. To his credit, Eisner effectively weaves the indicators of the passage of time (and other expository material) into the flow of the pages, which average five or six panels each.

A word about these page layouts: they are largely without standard panel borders, yet the eye is directed through the page, from image to image, without hesitation. Unlike so many mainstream comics of today, one never has to pause to decide which panel to read next. When you consider the complexity of Eisner’s pages, it becomes apparent that his mastery of the form, at 77 years of age, has reached near perfection.

In Dropsie Avenue, as in his other graphic novels, substance is more important than style. Though his renderings often contain extraordinary beauty, and his craftsmanship isn’t flagging in the least, Eisner doesn’t often care about creating “pretty pictures.“ His focus is on the players’ behavior, their specificity of expression, and the emotional line of the narrative.

In the first half of the book, while his story is gaining steam, he introduces an astonishing array of characters in brief cameos; in the second half, as if knowing that the reader needs more continuity and depth, he develops a trio of characters whose lives will lead us from World War II to the present.

Polo Polermo, a boxing champ from “the hood,“ enters local politics in order to do something for his neighbors. Though he’s more than willing to bend principle to achieve a result, and he makes a living in the process, Polo isn’t in it strictly for personal gain. Polermo sees great promise in a smart young lawyer (also from Dropsie) named Abie Gold. Gold becomes a councilman. Together they use all their wiles and connections to make sure the downtown politicians don’t entirely neglect the South Bronx. For a number of years, the two succeed in holding the opportunists and the mob at bay.

Then there’s Izzy Cash, the sawed-off ragman who shocks a banker by pulling $5,000 in crumpled bills from his grimy pockets, enough to buy a tenement in foreclosure. Eventually, Cash’s own greed leads him to become what we know now as a slumlord, yet he is far from a villain. Even when he’s forced to sell his buildings to “finishers“ who will strip them of anything of value, one understands that Izzy is simply trying to make a profit. And he does. Although forgivable, since Eisner seems basically an optimist, Rowena’s philanthropy undermines the more somber implications of the work.

Up to that point, it seems to me, the author has shown us that individuals motivated by greed will overpower those well-meaning souls who seek to preserve a neighborhood’s quality of life. One might wish for a happier conclusion, and it’s true that Eisner tacks on an equivocal twist at the very end rather than expect us to swallow the sugar straight; but, one can’t help but go back to his original unvarnished statement: “Neighborhoods have life spans. They begin, evolve, mature and die.“ Had his narrative adhered to this statement, the death of Dropsie Avenue would have had a power only suggested, finally, by the image on the back cover of the book, which resembles nothing so much as a bombed-out war-zone.

Even with that sort of uncompromising ending, the book wouldn’t be a total bummer. For if no particular action or group of actions could have permanently halted the decline of a neighborhood, Eisner’s dramatization of some of the positive moments that derive from the community pulling together offers a kind of inspiration. The best example that comes to mind is the moment when Father Gianelli and Rabbi Goodstein surprisingly agree to preside over an inter-faith wedding. Though the families are at first skeptical, the union of an Italian girl and a Jewish boy gives Dropsie Avenue one of its finest moments. The marriage stays together, and the two families find an accommodation. Ethnic tensions in the area are temporarily eased. Eisner knows how to deepen a story by using the unexpected. There is hope in the inner city.

I’d wager that not many standard-issue paperbacks of political cartoons go through a second printing. This one has, for virtues well-known to anyone who’s familiar with Tom Toles’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work. The 128-page book opens with Bush’s prompt booting from office and closes with the end of the calendar year 1995, another Presidential race looming and most everything else remaining the same as it ever was.

Or maybe worse. This collection shows Toles setting out less opprobrium than Brand Name stupidity warrants; for instance, we are denied the extended skewering that Gingrich and Clinton so richly deserve. Instead, the book gives more of Toles’ perceptions on the faceless, broader-based public ignorance to which we all contribute, an obliviousness to the environment, to human dignity, and to national responsibility being the chief sins among many.

Consequently, most of the themes in the past election have been foreshadowed in this volume; inequities of taxation and the greater inequities of tax reform proposals; budgetary preposterousness; campaign contribution outrages; affirmative actions divisiveness; the global befouling of our nest. NAFTA, major league baseball, civilian militia, and the Million Man March all resurface, though several issues fairly beg for more of Toles’ pointed ministrations. One-punch knockouts, however, are frequent (bureaucrat addressing a forest full of animals: “We’ve decided to put all species protection into one block grant so you can decide amongst yourselves who goes extinct;“ the EPA moving pollution testing out of Washington and “closer to the people;“ maternity hospitals with drive-thru window service and the query “Congratulations! Would you like fries with that?“)

Despite the savagery of which they are capable, Toles’ cartoons are exceedingly reader friendly, with their amicable, doughy figures, clever constructions, clear rendering, and deft punch line, that unsettling yuk that is invariably one-upped by smaller corner commentary. The sole problem here is that there are too few examples to fully document Toles’ inestimable perspective on a span of monumental venality and recklessness.

This collection of stories focuses on the “Non Posse Member“ and his attempts to understand the wild and carefree “Dum Dum Posse.“ The Non Posse Member is a regular guy who has a job and accepts the responsibilities of life. The Dum Dum Posse doesn’t even have a regular address, they just come and go as they please, following their whims. The Non Posse Member alternates between desperately wanting to join the Posse and being really ticked off, frustrated and annoyed by their antics. It reads like some sort of amateur anthropological text written by a schizophrenic, or like a cross between philosophical diary musings and silly cartoon adventures. The cartooning will remind you of Gary Panter, but it’s got even more spunk and a greater sense of joy. The inner feelings of the characters emanate from them in a frenetic blaze of scratchy lines.

The strange stories build on each other and a real emotional presence inhabits the book. It’s very real. No matter how silly or off the wall things get the stories are very much grounded in observations of human relationship of the real world. Only 400 copies of this book were produced. It’s about 50 pages long, on a 8 1/2 X 11 paper, spiral bound, with sturdy clipboard covers sporting a cute and classy yellow and black design. It’s a priceless treasure, absolutely wonderful. Don’t put it off, get one today!