Project: Romantic

• AdHouse Books follows up their smash anthology hits of Superior and Telstar with a book about love... and love stuff. A modern take on the classic genre! Contributors include: Nick Craine, Debbie Huey, Chip Kidd, Hope Larson, Junko Mizuno, Scott Morse, Joel Priddy, Paul Rivoche, Jim Rugg, Ash Wood and many more!

The third in Adhouse's Project anthology series finds several dozen indie cartoonists taking on the idea of romance comics. Of course, modernity—and being indie—means that very few contributors offer boy-meets-girl/happily-ever-after scenarios, instead addressing the chaos and angst of love with tongue in cheek. In MK Reed's "Mrs. Jeremy Dellorso," for instance, a young woman tells her parents she's gotten engaged to a bear (who has terrible table manners). There's a wide range of styles and competencies on display here. Some pieces are design-based, like Brian Flynn's existential dialogue "The World of Ghosts and Robots" and Rian Hughes's "iGirl"; others are hand-scribbled, like Austin English's "Valentine." The prettiest artwork doesn't always go hand-in-hand with the most coherent stories, although Scott Morse's bold, kinetic wordless piece "Over Yonder" leaps out as a visual tour de force. Other highlights include "When I Was a Slut," an evocative anecdote about gossip and instant-messaging by Hope Larson; Kaz Strzepek's tale of flesh-eating zombie love, "Sewer Girls"; and Josh Cotter's one-page jokes about animals in love (tortoise to hare: "I feel like maybe we're moving too fast"). (Sept.)
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