Scrublands - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560977442 ISBN 13: 9781560977445

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2006

Synopsis

by John Daly
Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the debut collection of John Daly, the first book the company has published by a South African cartoonist. Daly's cartoons, offbeat, hallucinatory, and often hilarious, seems descendant from the substance-induced work of Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Victor Moscoso, and S. Clay Wilson, filtered through the artist's own unique vision and sense of the absurd. Stories alternate between full-color and black-and-white, and range from representational Jim Jarmusch-like scenarios to wild visual excursions, albeit linear ones.

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Daly is a cartoonist from South Africa. Born in London, he studied animation for two years at Cape Town’s City Varsity College. His work has been described as “Tintin Meets the Freak Brothers in the Cape of Good Dope.” His books include Scrublands, The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, and Dungeon Quest.

From Publishers Weekly:

Funky, weird and wonderful, Daly's surprisingly compelling collection is a fever dream of a place, with landmarks reminiscent of both South Africa (Daly's homeland) and Haight-Ashbury circa 1968—possibly the author's spiritual home. In this robustly drawn world, drenched in shades of orange and yellow, Daly follow a troupe of Furry Freaks whose daily lives are a series of surreal episodes involving drugs, sex, art and the hypocrisy and cruelty of contemporary culture. In one vignette, a character becomes erotically obsessed with a friend's art class project, a sculpture of a giant pair of breasts; the climax of the tale comes when the artist receives an "A" for his work's "savage social commentary"—while the obsessed character attempts to copulate with it. Daly's characters engage in mundane tasks such as grocery shopping and then come home to watch the apartment wall give birth to a small child. The centerpiece is a lengthy, wordless piece entitled "Prebaby," which takes place in a red landscape of bumps and tubes and, at one point, the naked female form. It's beautiful, and quite opaque, in contrast to the rest of the work, which is anything but subtle. Overall, a strong, strange debut. (June)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1560977442
• ISBN 13: 9781560977445
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128