Ed Subitzky

I'd never heard of Ed Subitzky before coming across this book in my local library's catalog, but I'm always up for trying something new. Except this is actually something old, reprinting cartoons from 1972 to 2013 that originally appeared mostly in National Lampoon magazine, but also in the The New York Times, The American Bystander, and other publications.

Most of the cartoons are only one or two pages, but they can take forever to read as they are super-wordy. Also, the panels frequently show more shrink down smaller than one-inch square, filling the page with tiny squares with barely-drawn characters crushed under a deluge of words. (I imagined Chris Ware seeing the page and saying, "Hey, don't you think that's a bit small?") Even worse are the three text-only stories inserted throughout the book.

There's a tendency toward metafiction, absurdity, and sex and porn jokes. I found none of it funny, though some of it became almost interesting in an abstract, philosophical way.

Overall though, it was a long and tedious slog that frequently made me drift off to sleep. show less