As a follow-up to his earlier volume of collected Julius Knipl comic strips, Ben Katchor has continued the sly and seductive thread of the Knipl narrative (I couldn't resist that...) into ever more subtle territory. Some of the pieces in the present volume are twee and ephemeral enough to seem hardly worth the effort, and as I began to read I worried that Katchor had lost his touch.

My worries dissipated completely on reading the extended piece that ends the book, fittingly named "The Beauty Supply District". This long piece, which not coincidentally deals with abstract music as part of its subject matter, has the pacing and the payoff of a multi-part orchestral suite, and brings the overall vision of the Julius Knipl oeuvre into a wonderful focus.

Symmetry plays an overt role in "The Beauty Supply District", and seems to play a secondary role as a confounding factor in the lives of Julius Knipl and all of the odd inhabitants of his eccentric metropolis. Ben Katchor has once again offered up a highly unique vision that represents a tour de force of the comics genre. ( )