
Advertisement

Megahex
Simon Hanselmann
FantagraphicsMegahex is a hardcover collection of mostly older work by Simon Hanselmann, who does the Megg, Mogg, and Owl comic that appears weekly on this very site. Megahex collects stories of three roommates: a witch named Megg, her cat/boyfriend Mogg, and their nebbish pal Owl, who is a big talking owl guy. They also have a group of friends who come around. Together they get drunk, high, abuse one another, have adventures, fights, and get hurt while trying to stave off depression. This book is inevitably going to be number one on a lot of "best of the year" lists. Every page is beautiful. Every joke is funny. Every character is a complete asshole. The book itself is a nice chunky hardcover with some good heft and a cover design that is made to resemble a DVD box set of a TV show. Every element of the book is drawn by Simon except the barcode, and it is a very special object.I did a little interview with Simon about Megahex, and here it is.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement


Advertisement

QCHQ
Jordan Speer
Space Face BooksI woke up very drunk and read this comic on the toilet while still in a dreamstate, which made this already intense experience even more real and emotionally involving.Where the hell did Jordan Speer come from? This guy is doing something that is mind-bending and completely new to me. It's hard to accurately describe what he's doing because I do not totally comprehend.


Buddy Buys a DumpPeter BaggeFantagraphicsI insist that owning every individual issue of Peter Bagge's Hate is essential to any comic collection. This volume collects the stories from the Hate Annuals, which were made after Hate's 30-issue run came to a close. Buddy and Lisa become older and have a baby. Buddy buys a dump, like the title says, and then has to wear an eyepatch, which he decides to combine with a captain's hat and an occasional corncob pipe. Buddy's brother is blabbing about the horrible fate of their dead friend Stinky. Life goes on for Buddy and Lisa in their sorta odd but sweet and domestic existence.
Advertisement


Benson's Cuckoos
Anouk Ricard
Drawn & QuarterlyAnouk Ricard is the best person on Drawn & Quarterly by about a million miles. She or he draws these cute little animals and people and animal people. Anouk has some great other books about a girl and her frog friend. This book is slightly more adult than those. Only slightly though.



Me Nut Nut Nut #2
Jason Murphy
Space Face BooksThis comic isn't easy to follow or make sense of, but it's still entirely enjoyable due to the fun art and goofy figures. There are two people and a spider. The spider seems to bite the guy a lot and make a spider-web wig for the lady. I can't really explain it better than that.
Advertisement


*Lil' Buddies Magazine*
*Edie Fake*Edie Fake makes these little zines of photos of anthropomorphic signs and mascots that belong to random businesses. Many are bizarre and funny. The best are some paintings of clothes in a laundromat that look like they want to nail each other. Volume one is random good things. Volume two is just dental signs.


Escapo
Paul Pope
Z2 ComicsEscapo is a graphic novel by Paul Pope about an ugly escape artist who is a very popular performer in a traveling circus. He has a big crush on a pretty dancing girl, but she loves another circus guy named the Acrobat King, who looks like Paul Pope.Paul Pope's beautiful, inky, seemingly loose but super well-informed drawings have been great for so long that even though he's still relatively young, there are multiple generations of illustrators whose styles were primarily informed by studying Paul's stuff. THB, Paul Pope's comic about teenage girls on Mars, is probably his best stuff. All his other comics look great, but the stories are usually hit-or-miss. Paul will often get so wrapped up in clever inventions and concepts that he gets too far away from the story. I think Escapo works better than some of his other comics because the plot is pretty simple.

Advertisement

Moonhead and the Music Machine
Andrew Rae
Nobrow PressThis book tells the story of a nerd with a moon-shaped head that floats above his body. Everyone hates him until he plays some crazy song at the school talent show on a Devo-style guitar with a keyboard glued to it and the help of a boy in a ghost costume. Soon popular kids are nice to him, and he is rude to the nerdy lady who actually likes him. Then some other shit happens, and it ends predictably with a plot borrowed from several 80s rom coms but with one or two alt-comic-style curveballs. It's fun to read, but afterward the story seems kind of simple, stupid, and even false.Get it here.

Musashi
Sean Michael Wilson and Michiru Morikawa
ShambhalaThis is some real dogshit-looking manga. The line work is ugly, and there's an over-reliance on some hideous zip-a-tone textures that it doesn't look like the artist was comfortable using. I would like to direct the makers of this comic to a great book called Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. It is one of the best and funniest mangas around.

