Depending on your perspective, there is nothing so infuriating or so sincerely appreciated as a good inside joke. To the target audience, an inside joke conveys not only humor, but a sense of belonging. It appeals to the aspect of human nature that demands that each of us consider ourselves unique, while longing for someone else to show an appreciation of our uniqueness. It says to the individual, "Yes, brother, I understand your plight and share your demons. So, two rabbis and an astrophysicist walk into a bar ..."

To the outsider, the inside joke offends the desire to be accepted by others. It says to the individual, "This is not meant for you, because you are too ignorant to understand the meaning. So, two rabbis and an astrophysicist walk into a bar ..."

Depending on who you are, Tales to Demolish #2 is either an ingenious inside joke for artcomics readers or an incomprehensible mess. The politically correct thing would be to take up the cause of the outsiders and condemn Eric Haven for wasting his energy on something that only a handful of readers will be able to appreciate. Reality demands something different. While Haven's references may as well be Sanskrit to the neophyte, they are basic to those in the know. The climate of the comics market dictates that anyone who would not get Haven's joke would not have the opportunity to buy this comic, anyway. It is the logical outcome of the turf wars in the comics ghetto. As such, it has more in common with an article in a trade magazine than it does with popular entertainment.

Speaking directly to the content of Tales is problematic, because it is one of those rare books for which a spoiler would actually spoil its impact. Tales hinges on an initial double-barreled joke that shocks the reader into a stupor. The author never allows the reader to recover, issuing a steady barrage of absurd gags, relying on the shock of the initial joke to enhance their impact. To reveal the comedic premise would detract from the effect of the entire work, making it difficult to analyze the strip openly.

But Tales can be judged without revealing the particulars. By creating a farce so deeply entrenched in insider knowledge, the author sets himself up for easy failure. Haven's use of highly respected artcomics figures as the butts of jokes could be seen as a sad attempt to drum up some excitement around his work. To succeed, the author's talent would need to outshine his references. Haven's does. He creates a top-notch farce that plays with artcomics references, but does not rely on them too heavily. Instead it relies on the author's comedic sensibilities.

The author balances the absurd situation in Tales with subtle, concise character voices. He works the story like an expert, keeping the situation moving as the characters talk, never allowing the dialogue to wander off on a tangent. The mixture of the absurd situation with the dry voice gives Tales the feel of a Monty Python sketch. Haven's visuals are also Pythonesque at times. Though his artwork bears little resemblance to Terry Gilliam's, one scene featuring Haven's version of god evokes the same mixture of visual awe and total ridiculousness that marks Gilliam's cartoons.

Yet for all the good things there are to say about Tales, the problem of its exclusiveness persists. The obstacle of the inside joke would be too great for a legion of intelligent people with sophisticated senses of humor, their only crime being a lack of familiarity with an obscure, underachieving artform. Tales may be a good inside joke, but it is still an inside joke. Here's to hoping that next time Haven takes a more universal approach to his work, so that the pleasure derived from reading it will be a less guilty one.

While it's easy to criticize Eric Haven's intentions, the creators of Mendy and the Golem appear to be engaged in a more admirable pursuit -- to create a comic that appeals specifically to Jewish children. But Mendy has the same problem as Tales: exclusivity. Mendy and Rivkie Klein live with their parents in the fictitious city of New Haven, where they attend private Hebrew day school, hang out at a Pizza parlor called Noah's Ark, and socialize with other upper middle-class Jewish kids. Just as you're not likely to get Tales if you're not an artcomics reader, you're not likely to get Mendy unless you're looking ahead to your bar or bat mitzvah.

But a case can be made for exclusivity. For Tales, the strongest argument in favor of the insiders-only angle is the exclusive nature of the artcomics audience -- the insiders will probably be the only people to see Tales, therefore appealing to them exclusively is acceptable. In the case of Mendy, the best argument is that it appeals to a segment of society that is often ignored in children's entertainment.

But the ultimate test is whether the comic is good enough to justify its exclusive nature? Mendy is a borderline case. Goldberg is the kind of professional increasingly lacking at mainstream publishing houses. His Archie Comics-style of figure drawing seems almost too quaint, but his panels are rich with detail. Brandstein's dialogue is a bit dry at times. Several story devices he uses are so hackneyed that even the least observant child would recognize them. But Brandstein keeps his story moving, and is able to maintain some genuine suspense throughout. His duo of child adventurers stays busy adventuring, which is the most important thing in this sort of comic.

Brandstein and Goldberg's collaboration will likely improve in time. It's not likely to be licensed into a slick Hollywood blockbuster or Saturday-morning cartoon any time soon, but it could offer something worthwhile to its intended audience.

From a comic meant to uplift a race to a pair of racist comics: Getting away with a racist joke is a delicate operation. The funnier a joke is, the more leeway it is likely to receive in terms of offensive quality. However, even the funniest joke can be tagged "racist" if it is too offensive. The artist must demonstrate to the reader that he or she is aware of the joke's racist nature, and that such racism is not in step with civilized society. Norman Lear and the creators of All in the Family made it acceptable to laugh at Archie Bunker's racist behavior by making it clear that Archie was an ignorant bigot whose views should not be emulated by decent, intelligent people. Tony Millionaire's Maakies cartoon featuring a drunken Indian made no such acknowledgement of the absurdity or ugliness of racial stereotypes, and thus became a target for Native American-rights groups.

For a racist joke not to be racist, it must be both funny and sensitive. Charlie Chong is neither. In Charlie Chong in Chong vs. Kong, Larned Justin includes this disclaimer: "This comic book is a parody through the use of satire, and not intended to offend anyone. Can't we all just get along?" There is a similar notice in Charlie Chong in Cairo Foe, which points out that the comic is a parody of the Charlie Chan movies, and, again, shouldn't offend anyone.

The very obvious flaw in Justin's reasoning is that the Charlie Chan movies are offensive, the same way minstrelsy, once common, is now considered offensive. No one would dare to parody the blackface performances of the 19th and early 20th century without, at the very least, acknowledging the racist nature of those performances. That Justin fails to do that in his Charlie Chan parody is disheartening.

Of course, no amount of social consciousness can make up for a bad sense of humor, so there really never was any hope for these books. The author relies heavily on clumsy puns and toilet humor -- not the best approach when your hero is a dead ringer for one of the most notorious icons of Hollywood racism. His cartooning, for what it's worth, is as ungainly as his jokes.

So, Chong is the opposite of All in the Family -- insensitive, unfunny and poorly produced. It makes the Maakies Indian strip look like a landmark achievement in multiculturalism by comparison.

What can be said about Kameelman #2 that hasn't already been said about all the other tedious, superhero-wannabe chaff out there? Try this: The first 11 pages are taken up by an environmentally themed skydiving sequence.

Nothing gets the blood pumping like a blend of five-cent philosophy and extreme-sports action. It helps when the character doing the narrating delivers clever, informed bits of wisdom such as, "Hanging out with Confucius would be so cool -- like being with a special uncle," and "Birds of a feather flock together, so like, what's my flock?" The narrator gets extra points for spontaneously blurting out, "Circle of life!" while imagining herself as a giant hawk hunting rats with human faces.

Veteran freelance comics artist Ron Randall does a pretty good job drawing this comic, but can't save it its unrelenting crappiness. The best piece of writing in the book has nothing to do with Kameelman or his skydiving pals -- it's the bio for the writer, T-Bone. The bio contains wild bits of fiction, such as a description of the author holding aliens at bay with a fireplace poker. But the real juice comes from the references made to the ideals and lifestyle behind the author's work: "Spurning journalism studies at the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism for 'the very obvious reason of wanting to keep the bottle uncorked,' T-Bone created a career combining fact, factoids, fictoids and fiction in the commentary on the human and alien condition." Such references belie an unchecked, undeserved ego of magnificent size. Only such an ego could lead an author to look at a page of Kameelman and think, "I love it!"