One of the most impressive-looking comics anthologies ever, the mammoth fourth volume of Harkham's Kramers Ergot series has a flabbergasting range of visual techniques and printing styles. Most of the stalwarts of the art-comics underground, from Jeffrey Brown (Unlikely) to Renée French (Grit Bath), contribute pieces to it. Harkham's aesthetic is a bit different from those behind predecessors like Raw and Non, though. The artists he favors tend to be people who've come to comics from a fine-art background, often because they were drawn to the form's narrative possibilities and potential for bold graphic approaches. Some of their work is distinctly unpretty, like the crayoned art brut cover by Mat Brinkman and the garish doodles by Ben Jones; some of it is delicately controlled, like David Lasky's witty narrative, drawn in the style of late-1920s newspaper cartoons, of how the Carter Family came to record "Wildwood Flower." Some might call all the abstract collages that incorporate some drawing and some language in this collection comics by association only. But there's also a cornucopia of masterful cartooning here by artists who are just starting to break out—the book is anchored at both ends by Anders Nilsen's freewheeling "Sisyphus" stories and in the middle by Harkham's own devastating "Poor Sailor." (June)
