Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

Jill Greenberg’s MONKEY PORTRAITS is just that: photographs of monkeys. But monkeys making funny faces, sad faces, scary faces – the more unusual, the better. Her photography is amazing, not just for its clarity and crispness, but in capturing these extremely odd visages of extremely odd primates. There’s even one that – disturbo alert! – tries to replicate a PLAYBOY centerfold. Some of their expressions are so weird, you’d think the pages were paintings or heavily Photoshopped gags, but the (camera) eye has it, making it all the more amazing. A coffee-table book practically bereft of pesky words, PORTRAITS would make a good present for animal lovers. My wife wants to frame some of the pages for our walls, but what’s amusing in a book might grate on the walls, so I’m prepared to fling poo.

BIG FAT LITTLE LIT is a best-of collection culling from the three acclaimed LITTLE LIT oversized hardcover comics collections (for the record, FOLKLORE & FAIRY TALE FUNNIES, STRANGE STORIES FOR STRANGE KIDS and IT WAS A DARK AND SILLY NIGHT). The brainchild of Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, LITTLE LIT aims to get kids hooked on reading via comics; judging from my 9-year-old’s reaction to BIG FAT, I’d say they succeeded. And my 35-year-old self agrees, as BIG FAT is full of offbeat, charming stories that haven’t lost their indie edge even while intended for younger readers. The volume hosts a wealth of talent – both in writers and artists – including Daniel Clowes, Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snicket, Gahan Wilson, Tony Millionaire, Basil Wolverton, Jules Feiffer, Kaz, David Sedaris, Maurice Sendak, Charles Burns, J. Otto Seibold and many, many more. Puzzle pages bridge the entries of this most colorful collection, but you’ll treasure the tome too much to let a pencil anywhere near it. This would make a perfect holiday gift for any child on your list, but you’ll probably want to keep it for yourself.

J.F. Gonzalez’s THE BELOVED begins with promise, as a man wishing to interrupt his wife’s affair finds her canoodling with an alien life form. But that prologue then gives way to a rather confusing first chapter, in which about a dozen characters are introduced in the span of less than seven pages, with a woman named Elizabeth suddenly referred to as Michelle (similar appellation problems plagued Simon Clark’s THE TOWER). The story follows a newly divorced loser Ronnie having lots of crazy sex with his new girlfriend, Diana, who’s hated by the family, and especially Ronnie’s ex-wife, as Diana threatens to whip her daughter and let the family dog mount her. (If you’ve read Gonzalez’s SURVIVOR shocker from last year, you know this is child’s play by comparison.) This, however, is the least of their problems with Diana. As I’ve noticed with many recent horror efforts, the novel is overwritten by half, diluting whatever power Gonzalez can muster with his story.

With his retro style (perhaps best put to use in the sublime DC: THE NEW FRONTIER), Darwyn Cooke is the perfect person to illustrate DC’s upcoming relaunch of Will Eisner’s legendary THE SPIRIT. I’m just not sure he’s the person to write it. He and Jeph Loeb collaborate on the BATMAN/THE SPIRIT one-shot prequel, in which one masked detective of the night meets the other, and they band together to thwart a bomb plot on a policeman’s associaton meeting. Trouble is, with all the classic Batman villains on the loose, the story stoops to the slapstick jokiness of the TV show, despite a serious, hard-nosed start. No one alive can draw old-style glamour girls quite like Cooke, and the comic contains one of the greatest splash panels I’ve ever seen. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• SURVIVOR by J.F. Gonzalez