The strips in this anthology are the kinds of comics that strive to extricate an intense emotional reaction from the reader while avoiding the niceties of storytelling. The best comics in this collection do so and leave the reader with an empty, disconsolate feeling -- a mixture of sadness, confusion and "Is this it?" aching.

The most successful cartoonists in this collection are those that rely on a well-developed sense of pacing. One gets the feeling that if you were at a party with Kramers' cartoonists, Anders Nilsen and Neil Fitzpatrick would be the guys standing in opposite corners surrounded by small crowds. Nilsen's Birds is by far the funniest offering in the book. It's a series of five strips, the first one an introduction of sorts, one bird getting swallowed whole by the black cloud of his own discontented thought bubble. From there, Nilsen spends his time exploring and exploiting a dichotomous relationship. Nilsen's birds are a comedy team. Harris is the anxiety-stricken, social hypochondriac who is too stupid to be able to control his anxiety, thereby releasing it in outbursts that irritate Louis, his counterpart. Louis is in many ways the domineering straight man, but is much more, as well. He is Charles Schulz's Lucy; domineering one minute, hopelessly, egotistically optimistic the next. Louis' reactions to the haplessness and nervous rabble oozing from Harris span the same spectrum as Lucy's reactions to Charlie Brown's hapless, nervous rabble -- from bemused, mocking optimism to exasperated outrage. But there is a sadistic touch to Nilsen's strips that obviously takes its inspiration from a different source -- the fifth strip, for instance, reads like the best Akbar and Jeff strip that Matt Groening never drew, and the artistic style is obviously inspired by the minimalist school of art comics. A more polished artistic style would overwhelm Nilsen's pointed brand of humor. His style instead works in opposition to the "laugh at your pain" theme of his writing. The two seemingly disparate approaches are interweaved successfully, and for a hybrid not entirely unfamiliar, but still pleasing.

When viewed side-by-side with the work of cartoonists such as Hans Rickheit, Ben Jones and Joe Grillo, Neil Fitzpatrick's drawing style brings to mind words such as, "disinfected" or "sanitized." Anthologies force the reader to view separate works comparatively, and Fitzpatrick's clean style and simplistic layouts stand out in this book. Fortunately, Neil Jam holds up under the weight of the extra attention. The strip is heavy with an aching that is only touched on, never delved into fully. At its essence, Neil Jam is two conversations separated by a fight scene -- boy talks to girl, boy goes off and gets in a fight, boy gets caught fighting and has to talk to girl again. But Fitzpatrick's characters are the kind who say volumes without saying much at all. When the unnamed girl catches Willis and a bully fighting, both boys stop, the way boys would when something more interesting, such as a girl, comes along. When the two fighters refuse, in unison, an invitation to go to the park with the girl, the reader gets a more complete view of who these characters are. They are the sort of emotionally immature boys that know just enough to stop fighting when a girl tries to talk to them, but aren't savvy enough to keep from lashing out at her for stopping the fight. When the girl says, "I really wish you'd grow up, Willis," Willis responds with, "Hey, I'm grown!" It is clear then that Willis is a boy at one of life's earlier crossroads. He knows what the girl means when she tells him to grow up, but he is not ready to admit that, not ready to stop being the boy who sees "grown" as anything more than rumbling with a bully.

Grillo's The Black Lung Club and his collaboration with Jones, Cool Concert both demand to be read in an entirely different way than Fitzpatrick's or Nilsen's strips. Jones and Grillo's work asks the reader not to understand, but only to absorb. Both strips have something to do with a rock show. The Black Lung Club attempts to make the reader an audience member at a show, while Cool Concert puts the reader behind the scenes at a battle of the bands. Both worlds are fragmented in almost-inexplicable ways. Grillo's work gives the impression of collage without actually using much collage. Ben Jones seems almost lucid by comparison. Their collaboration is by far the stronger of the two strips, if only because the world of Cool Concert is explored in greater depth. They manage to relate to the reader basic ideas about the bands in Cool Concert while appearing to spend most of their energies on twisting the visuals. What the reader gets reads like a momentary glance into a concert on a world that is only barely comprehensible. But it's a glance that is far too short, stopping just when the strip has picked up steam, dumping the reader after six pages of concert shots, one for each band.

The rest of the strips are of two varieties: "Excellent but flawed" and "So what?" Rickheit's Chrome Fetus Comics is of the former variety. By far, Rickheit's is the most beautifully drawn strip in the collection: A man with a teddy bear head crosses paths with a parade of grotesque and bizarre creatures, the last of which turns out to be a mirror image of himself sitting in a chair. Conflict ensues, a gun is pulled and disease ravages the body of the survivor. Rickheit fails to deliver the sort of ending that the strip deserves, however, opting for a quick resolution featuring creepy children and toys that smells suspiciously of a moral. It is the type of ending that kills a joyride like Chrome Fetus.

Sammy Harkham's The Last Laugh has a different physiology than Chrome Fetus, but suffers from the same disease. The Last Laugh is a straightforward story about a man who gets his illusions about a woman shattered in the most painful way. The strip progresses in a way that makes the reader feel as if he or she were in the hands of an expert storyteller -- no need to worry about letdowns, just sit back and see where Harkham goes. The shock comes when it turns out that our destination is nowhere. Like his main character, Harkham chickens out and goes home when he should take action. Here Harkham makes an old mistake and fails to adhere to a very basic storytelling rule: what should be the precipitating action of this story is placed at the end. The stuff of interest should come after the protagonist walks in on his girl with another man, not before. Harkham instead has his character walk away, only vaguely pissed off and unsure how to spend the rest of his day. This may be the common reaction of a man like Harkham's character, but it is not the one worth reading about.

The rest of Kramers Ergot falls into the previously mentioned, "So what?" category. Mark Burrier's Autumn Chill, is a one-trick-pony of a strip. The principle idea is intriguing, but not explored deeply enough to be worthwhile. Sara Varon's Afternoon of Sandwiches is cute in a forgettable way, notable only for the apologetic afterword that informs the reader that the strip was only an exercise. Some of My Life So Far by Mat Tait is polished in appearance but brutal in its wordiness. Kathleen Lolley's three short strips are beautifully drawn but not much besides, while Stefan Gruber's three strips are cute, but even less besides. Luke Quigley fouls off a few mediocre gag strips before reaching base safely with Stoney Gnome.

But in an exciting book littered with short, pointless strips, Zack Soto's Comics Scene is the most pointless. The two-page love letter to the author's childhood experiences with comics fails to be interesting on any level. The reason that the strip manages to annoy in a book where other strips are so easily stricken from memory is its self-absorbed nature. Comics Scene relies on the reader to care about the types of characters a young child would make up in his or her head without telling the reader anything about those characters or that child. Whether or not the child in the story represents the artist or the characters depicted were the artist's actual childhood creations is irrelevant. Soto has reached for an effect that many of the great comics of the last few years rely heavily on -- nostalgia for experiences the reader may or may not share -- and he has failed. Because that effect is not just a tool to tell a story, but the strip's raison d'être, its failure makes Comics Scene linger in one's mouth the way cold breakfast sausage lingers on one's breath -- unpleasantly.

When a cartoonist deviates from the standard pamphlet form in his or her comic, he or she does so for one of two reasons: Either the comic is terrible and needs to be disguised somehow as innovative, or it is essential to the nature of comic that a different approach be taken in presentation. In this case, the artist's decision is driven by absolute necessity. Tautkus offers a flipbook sized, one-panel-per-page comic that fits in the palm of one's hand. Rather than serve as an impediment to the reading process, the small size of the book actually forces the reader to direct his or her attention more acutely on the comic. Krunk is not a book one relaxes with. Rather, it is a book that requires effort to read, but the sort of effort that proves deeply satisfying both during the process and after the fact. More important than the size is the artist's decision to present this comic in a one panel-one page storybook format. It relies heavily on a particular rhythm, and it is a rhythm that is not unlike the ticking of a clock.

By doing away with layouts entirely, Tautkus strips the story down to its most bare essentials: dialogue and line work. He displays a lovely ability to fuse a deceptively minimalist cartooning style with sparse, effective dialogue. The result is a comic that reveals an artist with a highly developed sense of dramatic pacing.

Krunk is just what it claims to be; the story of a short procedure. Jep Menso comes home from eating pizza and discovers that he has a hernia. The reader is taken through the steps leading up to Jep's hernia operation, his recovery and return to life as usual. Tautkus is obviously exploring the very basic tenets of narrative -- a problem arises, the problem is dealt with, the reader sees the way in which impact of the events is felt in the world of the story. But Tautkus accomplishes more in Krunk than going through the dramatic motions. He creates in Jep Menso a quiet, likeable character. When two nurses and a doctor each take turns trying to catheterize Jep, the reader feels sympathy. Later, when Jep leans excitedly into the intercom and says, "Tell the nurse I've peed. She should come pick it up," the reader shares in his triumph.

Lots of comics characters urinate. Very few make you feel proud of them.