Goats: Infinite Typewriters

The first mass-marketed collection of Rosenberg's long-running sci-fi geek-comedy Web comic revels in its own weirdness—it plunges straight into a bar discussion between a chicken, a goat and some aliens, and keeps piling absurdity on absurdity. (“There is one steadfast maxim that I hold dear,” one character notes: “an immortal super intelligent combat-trained zombie cyborg goldfish with a machine gun can have whatever the hell he wants.”) The book's first sequence ends with human protagonists Jon and Phillip convincing God to turn himself into a pork chop, then eating Him. Halfway through this volume, there's a showdown between Good Hitler and the recursive space-cows of Space Hitler, and if you're scratching your head by now, that's probably the desired effect. Fortunately, Rosenberg tends to sneak at least a small punch line into every panel—a couple of quips are already notorious “Goats” T-shirts, like “what part of 'ninja' don't you understand?” Rosenberg's full-color art has a blobby, loony flair to it. And if his storytelling often seems to be afflicted with severe short-attention-span syndrome, its free-associative culture-reference overload lets him get away with gags like a drunken Buddha announcing “Your momma so fat, she travels the noble eightfold path all at once!” (June)