This is as Bad as it Gets: A Voutch Cartoon Collection

Psychologies magazine designates Voutch "therapy by laughter."

* Voutch merges a luminescent art style with sardonic wit to create a one-of-a-kind critique of humanity.

More About This is as Bad as it Gets

French cartoonist Voutch offers a cartoon cocktail that's equal parts art, cynicism, humor, and tenderness.

* Filled with snide doctors, newfangled technologies, relentless media, communication faux pas, unreasonable bosses, and dysfunctional relationships, this stateside offering of Voutch's most popular French cartoons leaves nothing lost in translation.

* Employing the sophisticated art style gouache, which differs from watercolor in that its use of pigments is heavier and more opaque with greater reflective qualities, Voutch is as enjoyable to view as it is to read.

Olivier Voutch grew up in the Vosges region of France and resides in Paris. His first contact with comics was in his parents' library where he discovered de Testu, Otto Soglow, Saul Steinberg, and Maurice Henry. After a series of misadventures involving unfortunate timing and one misunderstanding, Voutch became a designer in a PR agency where he spent 15 years, during which time he became cochampion of the world in boomerang throwing. In 1995, Voutch began cartooning and published his first works in popular French magazines. Two years later, Voutch's first cartoon collection was published.