Whatever back

"I feel safe here, Cybal."
"Well that's the problem isn't it? You're too comfortable. You need some stimulation."
"I agree. That's why you have to set me up with one of you hot friends."
"Forget it. They only want guys in bands, doctors, and guys with a plow. Have you tried the internet?"
"In what sense?"

Tom and I have been lapping this up - lapping it up - constantly rushing over to show each other pages and it's enormous fun and quite, quite different from any other comic I've read. For a start it's autobiography, but it couldn't be further removed from Eddie Campbell's or Jeffrey Brown's or Joe Matt's or Marjane Satrapi's or Oliver East's. And that's a very wide variety of styles and purpose I've covered there.

It's episodic in a nature with most single-page episodes displaying an entertaining slant or punchline, some of them forming extended narratives as Karl or his friends get laid, dumped, stood up, rehearse, lose jobs, or - in the case of insane, comedy-accent Olaf - move in as a temporary housemate, fail to move out then start jumping up and down and searching their body-cavities for bugs.

But cartoon this aint. Photo-realism's having a bit of a revival at the moment, isn't it? (Jon J. Muth's M, Dave Sim's JUDENHASS and GLAMOURPUSS, Shaun Tan's THE ARRIVAL - sort of). The cross-hatching here has more than a little Gerhard to it, the oil paintings are stunning compositions, and there's one wordless page (102) which is eloquent beyond belief. Set around bohemian Allston, Massachusetts, it's an enormously thoughtful and engaging collection that will impress you no end.