Review: Michael Kupperman, Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 1

Humor

Michael Kupperman’s Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 1 offers hilarious bits of absurd humor doled out in two-three page bursts. Kupperman is an adept visual mimic, skilled at turning out the heavy-lined styles of old woodblock prints and over-the-top ads that used to promise hidden knowledge in Bronze Age comic books.

His sense of humor is fine too, wry, conceptual and always subverting the authority of the visuals that inspired him. John Hodgman is a good comparison. If you don’t find a quick hidden history of Sex Blimps and Sex Holes to be promising (because of a loophole, it turns out the flesh trade is legal 10 feet above or below the ground), this may not be for you.

The last volume of the four seems to lose a little inspiration; several of the gags seem like retreads of better, earlier offerings. But it’s still good for a lot of laughs.

Ben Stiller Won’t Do Just Anything for a Laugh

Humor, Well Worth Reading

The June 25 issue of the New Yorker has a fascinating long-form profile on Ben Stiller written by Tad Friend. “Funny Is Money” uses the planning process for the upcoming Stiller-directed “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” film as a springboard to examine the comedian’s career.

It offers a candid look at the sausage-making process of studio filmmaking–“four quadrants” appeal and margin percentages. But it also breaks down Stiller, revealing him to both an obsessive worker and a prickly character put off by the gross-out humor he’s often called to do.

Review: Mouse Guard Fall 1152 by David Petersen

Comics

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 is a kind of Knights Templar for the murine set. This roaming band of guardsmen live by a chivalrous code that has them protect the roadways of their tiny society, ensuring the ability of mice to trade and travel without becoming lunch.

The society is sword-and-cloak stuff, a Middle Ages vibe with castles and wooden houses, hand tools and ye old shoppes. It’s a solid start on a compelling world, although I wish more time had been spent exploring it. Instead we’re thrown right into the action, which feels pervasive.

The art is the high point. Peterson creates vibrant, water color-styled pages with an evocative interplay between light and dark. These mice live in night and day, sunshine and storm.

The writing isn’t as strong; a lot of the big lines feel borrowed from other stories, as if he’s still writing his way to a firm voice. But it works, and if it continues to improve to match the art–and add some more characterization to the storytelling–the series could be something special