Raw 1: 2open Wounds from the Cutting Edge of Commix

Formerly an oversized magazine, RAW returns as a trade paperback book, with the kind of dazzling graphics and eccentric stories that made the original publication so distinctive. Founding editors Spiegelman and Mouly, husband and wife, continue to fill their anthology with the work of some of the most sophisticated (and bizarre) comics artists from America and Europe. Best of all, this edition contains a new installment of Spiegelman's opus, Maus , his Holocaust/memoir/documentary comic that recounts the story of his father's extraordinary struggles to survive internment at Auschwitz and his own wry efforts to endure his father's overbearing personality. Charles Burns contributes the horrifically wacky ``Teen Plague,'' and Ben Katchor's cryptically funny story, ``The Smell on Exterior Street,'' is a wonderfully drawn, fanciful re-creation of the cranky urban ambience of New York's Lower East Side. Other excellent contributors include European cartoonists Lorenzo Mattotti and Jacques Loustal and Americans Edward Sorel and Kim Deitch. Black-and-white and color illustrations. (July)