Can you say, "Embarrassment of Riches?" Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty-FIve Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels is a 776 page hardcover overflowing with rare and hard-to-find comics published in out of the way nooks and crannies by some of the world's finest cartoonists, comickers and mangakas. It is also filled with family-album-style photos of these self-same creators side-by-side with each other as well as with D&Q staff, and more interviews and appreciations than can shake a stick at (not that you would want to). Here are some pics to give an idea of what's in store. Quite a treat!
Chester heads off into the desert of scriptural interpretation... and returns with a nice batch of solid comics. His storytelling is top notch, and his (anti-)Reader's Digest condensations of Old Testament tales are concise, to the point and entertaining to boot as they lead the reader surely and steadily into his speculative riffs on the Gospels. Drawn & Quarterly has put together an attractive and appropriately designed hardcover edition that shows off Chester's four-panel grid to good effect. That said, an inordinate portion of the book is devoted to notes that effectively reveal the book as being an apologetic for Chester's position(s) on prostitution, which is unfortunate. Anyone limiting their reading to the comics alone, will get an engaging read along with a morsel or two of food for thought. Anyone who dives into the notes will find themselves in the world of self-justifying scriptural interpretation, which is best left alone, should one like to maintain a copacetic mien. Here's hoping that Chester has worked it out of his system with this and that we can look forward to some less self-justifying fare in the future.
Believe it or not, this is an all-new mini-comic collaboration between the one-and-only Chester Brown and fellow Canadian, Dave Lapp (whose combined names are anagrammed in the pseudonym). It's only 12 pages + cover, but it's a hand-signed (by Lapp) and numbered (by Brown) edition of 100 copies. Chester and Dave step out for a brief bit of goofy fun that, naturally, veers uncontrollably into the weird.
It appears we have sold out of this... BUT it may only be that our stock has been mislaid, as our records show we should still have two copies. Feel free to check back, in case they turn up.
