This week- surprise surprise!- the awesome Ray Fenwick is going to be guest blogging five of his favorite books. If you haven’t seen Ray’s work or read the huge article about him in Print magazine, then it’s time to check his work out via his website, his flickr page or his design studio’s site. His patterns are my favorite, full of super illustrative elements, they are always light and fun. (He’s been a huge inspiration for me in that department.) His work always has a great sense of humor to it from his handdrawn LL.Cool J lyrics to his Hall of Best Knowledge comics (which this spring will be published by Fantagraphics) to this great Don’t Freak Out Shopper tote bag. Ray has such a big fan club that it was almost impossible to get one of his Tiny Showcase letterpressed prints. When it came time to purchase I had to click refresh about 55 times because the site was so overloaded. I always look forward to hearing what Ray’s up to next because it’s always something exciting and his emails often make me laugh outloud. I am so so happy he was willing to contribute to this blog and make me laugh a little more. Thanks Ray!!

You should buy it!

Some people use the phrase “art comic” as a kind of slur, but not you and I, no. We are better than those fools, because we realize that art comics pack up two fantastic things and put them together in one beautiful, slightly pulsating package. We love art, and we also love comics, do we really have to choose a side? Are we in grade six again? Can I stop saying we at this point?

Weee!

So anyways, Teratoid Heights is a comic by Mat Brinkman, an alumni of an influential art/comics collective Fort Thunder which also includes another great comic creator, Brian Chippendale. By the time I found Fort Thunder it was already gone, but I’ve snapped up as much of their output as I can afford.

In Teratoid Heights, each short comic takes a simple action or idea and gives life to it through a cast of surreal, sometimes grotesque characters. The experience of reading it is like observing people in another world through a telescope, because it’s almost silent, and the things you’re seeing are the kinds of activites creatures do when they aren’t being watched, which is very satisfying.

I’m always searching for art that gives me both something I understand and something I don’t. I like the feeling of being pleasantly out of sorts, and this book does that beautifully. It all seems remotely familiar, but there are key differences from what your familiar with, and wait, what is that blob with the umbilical cord doing? What’s going on? Yes! Give me more!

© Julia Rothman 2007