Picasso's life narrated by a hamburger; pubic hair stencils for men; Bambiffpow Jackson, “there's a fistfight in my very name!”—and that's just part of the first five pages of this hilarious collection of humorous comics and illustrations. Kupperman has been laffing it up for years via cartoons in the New Yorker
and animation on Saturday Night Live
, but his smart, droll, absurdist humor is best displayed in this compendium of the first four issues of the comic of the same name. Kupperman's wit and imagination is only heightened by the stiff, self-conscious woodcut style he often uses for art, although it sometimes bursts out in a blobbier style for such things as the kid-friendly “Fireman Octopus.” Some stories and characters recur, such as the buddy-cop duo Snake n' Bacon, a snake and a strip of bacon who solve crimes while repeating the same lines, and other characters throw themselves into disaster. The gags pile upon the gags—mock classified ads for Sausage Lad—“Yo, Bitch! You look hungry for sausage!”—rammed on the same page as a '70s cop-show parody starring Albert Einstein and Mark Twain. The humor never lags in a book that is destined to be a comedy classic and is truly one of the funniest books in years. This hardcover edition adds color and an intro by Robert Smigel to the original comics. (July)
