Do you remember Don Freeman from your youth? I really loved Corduroy with his missing button. So when this came in the mail from Drawn & Quarterly, I was super excited. I wasn’t aware that Don did work like this- “pre-modern-era graphic novels”. Don originally self-published this book himself. It’s about a man, Floyd W. Skitzafroid, who splits in half, literally, and becomes two men. One of them goes to work in an office and the other is an artist. The artist paints a picture of a naked lady with grapes and sells it to a gallery. The office man has a terrible day surrounded by paperwork and a screaming boss. The two men meet back up at the end of the day to become one again and go home to his wife. The man is shocked to find out his wife has purchased his painting at 8 times the price. (She doesn’t know he made it. He can’t tell her obviously because it was a naked lady painting.) He is very upset and goes to bed angry but then wakes up with a brilliant idea to combine his two selves and start an art gallery himself. The end. A happy end. This book is told through all drawings, no words. The illustrations are really really loose, almost like quick ink sketches. The back of the book has an nice short afterward from Dave Kiersh about Don’s life. This year is apparently the centennial of Don’s birth. Get a copy of this small hardcover here.

© Julia Rothman 2007