Come One Come All
Buy this book right now! Seriously, if you wait to read the whole review you might miss out, as there were only 60 copies of this done. Souther gave me a copy of this at SPX this year on the condition that I really read it, so this review is going to be a bit longer than usual. If you come to the site just to find out about new things and try to avoid my longer rambles, well, you were warned. The first thing that struck me here were the myriad styles on the pages, which were mostly illustrations, with a comic story (sketchbook style) or two thrown in. Intricate, simple, watercolors, line art, screenprinting… As I said, it’s a collection of mostly one page illustrations, so any attempt at getting a “start to finish” type of story out of this is worthless, and a bit misguided. In here are cats, poetry, a magic lamp, an angel stealing a jellyfish, ice cream, laughter, a monkey balloon, confusion, dude, underwear, an alien, inventions, a shoe, stabbing, a fire-breathing dog robot, a tall man, and a poignant tribute to Snoopy. Those are the surface things. For a whole bunch of those surface things, there’s a lot more going on there than the first picture. I’d recommend flipping back and forth from the contents page to the corresponding picture so you can see the title for each thing, as it adds layers to everything in here. If this is anything near what an average sketchbook of his looks like, he should put these out as often as possible. There’s a truly incredible mind at work here, and if there’s any justice in the world he’ll be rich in ten years from drawings that he put on cocktail napkins. I’d guess this is $5, if you could even put a price on something this gorgeous, but just send him a bundle of cash. I’m sure you’ll get back more than you gave. Did I even mention the pages yet? All kinds of different shapes and sizes, and I can’t even imagine the effort that had to go into making each copy of this. Buy it already! Here’s the website.
