Once upon a time, picture books got parental approval and pulp comics were a sneaky pleasure. In this sequel to Little Lit, Spiegelman and Mouly create a hybrid of the two that may well appeal to oddballs of all ages. Charles Burns leads the charge with his high-impact cover image of an alien reading a boy's space comics. The alien has kewpie-doll eyes and a puppyish nose, but its sinewy muscles and lurid green skin pack a perverse threat. In the endpapers, which suggest a pulp-mag correspondence course, Underworld
author Kaz offers "Strange Cartoon Lessons" cards ("Bad at drawing legs? Put your character behind a desk"). After these engaging diversions, the treasury trots out stories from the funny-ha-ha to the funny-strange, many dealing with secret identities. Spiegelman invents a boy whose moods materialize as clones; Jules Feiffer's anxiety-prone child gets "Trapped in a Comic Book"; and Jacques de Loustal and Paul Auster collaborate on a melancholy Kafka-esque noir
tale. As the title promises, some of the material is disturbing. Maurice Sendak's punny "Cereal Baby Keller" reprises his violent sketch of a ravenous baby that eats its parents; Ian Falconer and David Sedaris team for a gruesome story of a monster that flips inside-out because "Real beauty is on the inside." More benign picks include an exhausting maze game by Lewis Trondheim, and Barbara McClintock's buoyant story of a shadow that breaks loose. A lengthy reprint of Crockett Johnson's Barnaby
strip seems misplaced here, but its airy layout and square panels are a strong counterpoint to the condensed, offbeat material. This compendium, with its stellar group of comix and picture-book literati, revels in its dark side and suggests that "strange kids" are the mainstream. All ages. (Nov.)
