Who Needs Donuts has found its way back to civilization!  After a relatively brief hiatus out in the wilderness of "out of print status", Mark Alan Stamaty's sui generis work, originally published way back in 1973, and then reissued in 2004, has returned to the fold and is now once again back in print, in this new, faithfully reproduced hardcover edition from D & Q.  Yay!

Here's our write up for the earlier, 2004 reissue:

Stamaty’s cult masterpiece is now back in print after a thirty year hiatus, in a beautifully produced hardcover edition.  Once you start looking at this book, it's really hard to stop.  You just get sucked in.  The appeal of this book lies in the neural connections between the eyes and the brain and the hand that draws, it’s pretty hard to explain... but those who are already familiar with Stamaty’s work from his many-year run on Washingtoons in the Village Voice, and, more recently, his endpage strip in the New York Times Book Review, Boox, will know what we’re talking about.  This is technically a kids’ book -- and kids will dig it, especially those hyper-brainy types (this is the perfect book to save them from a life of video-game addiction before it’s too late), and was more than likely an inspiration to Martin Handford, the creator of the Where’s Waldo series as well as the team responsilbe for the I Spy book series -- but it will, perhaps, be most appreciated by obsessive-compulsive adults -- you can be sure that Ben Katchor has this book in his personal library.  The level of detail in the drawings that fill this book has to be seen to be believed.  Furthermore, it is not just detail, but detail with an agenda, and that agenda can perhaps best be summed up in the phrase, "reality is what you make it."  Reality as Stamaty makes it, is, more than likely, not reality as seen by you or I, but Who Needs Donuts makes us realize that it doesn't have to be that way, that the possibilities are only limited by our imaginations.  We really recommend this one!

And if you're not already familir wioth this classic, then do yourself a favor and feast your eyes on this PDF preview provided by D & Q.