Wondermark: Clever Tricks To Stave Off Death - Hardcover

David Malki

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1595823298 ISBN 13: 9781595823298

Publisher: Dark Horse, 2009

Synopsis

Dark Horse Comics presents this second hardbound collection of David Malki's nationally syndicated Wondermark, a sarcastic, silly, and razor-sharp gag comic strip created entirely from nineteenth century woodcuts and engravings. A follow-up to 2008's critically acclaimed Beards of our Forefathers, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death contains over one hundred comic strips originally published in The Onion and on Wondermark.com, as well as many pages of additional material - such as Malki's eight-page graphic story "Ransom!" and, as promised, a bevy of techniques intended to help the reader delay the inevitable onset of their own demise - written and designed in Malki's trademark hilarious style.

About this title

About the Author:

David Malki was once slapped by Ray Bradbury. It was probably affectionate.

Review:

Malki's nationally syndicated Wondermark comic strips are a form of resuscitated art in which 19th-century woodcuts and engravings get repurposed into 21st-century humor with snarky dialogue. Popularized most by their appearances in the Onion, whose high- and lowbrow satirical mixture is a perfect fit for Malki's sensibility, this is the second mordant but must-have Wondermark collection...

A typical Malki gag rises out of the World of Tomorrow esque frisson of his staid premodern images of stiff men (frequently mustached and wearing waistcoats while lounging in drawing rooms) or women (parasols and cherubic expressions being their norm) exchanging dialogue more appropriate for a MySpace chatroom than Dickensian fiction.

Malki's humor often has a surrealistic bent reminiscent of Terry Gilliam, given some extra steel by a near-constant obsession with death and disease, with particular attention in a hilarious end-of-book Malady Matrix. A little of Malki goes a long way, but it's a rare page that doesn't merit at least a chuckle. --Publishers Weekly

Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death is the latest collection from Wondermark, the demented and delightful webtoon built around Victorian engraving clip-art and snappy dialog. As the title suggests, this volume is loosely structured around medical themes, with loads of funny little arch snippets of text and graphics on the theme of absurd, notional Victorian quack remedies (I kept being reminded of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases).

Wondermark reads like Terry Gilliam crossed with The Far Side, and I found myself laughing my ass off throughout this delightful little journey...A must-have for truss-aficionados, clip-art nuts, webcomix geeks, and happy mutants. --Cory Doctorow, boingboing.net

About this edition

• Publisher: Dark Horse
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1595823298
• ISBN 13: 9781595823298
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96