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.