Michael DeForge

Razor-sharp short stories from the greatest contemporary comics stylist. Michael DeForge has been dissecting the comics visual language for more than a decade and continues his creative winning streak with his tenth book for D&Q and second collection of short stories, All the Cameras in My Room. The prolific cartoonist s hilarious and horny approach to comics fiction never disappoints. In 'Figure Skating,' a star athlete s impossible feats captivate the world, turning a simple skater s rotation into a catalyst for national paralysis. While in 'Holiday Special,' a narrator tells us about his favorite Christian holiday special that bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain bald-headed-boy-and-his-dog classic. No matter the conceit, characters in All the Cameras in My Room stretch and flatten and spiral around each other and burrow deep into the folds of a reader s brain. Deforge s stories break down how we consume pop culture, interrogate our relationship to star power and recontextualize our nostalgia into a shared mythology, cementing his place as the most consistent and beguiling cartoonist working today.

The post-alien abduction trauma memoir we?ve all been waiting for?Ah, there?s that famous lip quiver!? says Jackie?s abductor and student. Jackie has been determined to be the ?saddest living person in the entire world? by a mysterious team of alien abductors. His earthly musical celebrity is nothing compared to his emotional superstar status in the eyes of these curious and peculiar shape-shifters. Jackie is forced to perform his sadness over and over again on command, so his captors can study and master this very puzzling, very human emotion. Until just like that, Jackie is returned to his old life. Trying to comprehend what has happened, he joins a support group. It?s a sea of conspiracy theorists, emotional vampires, and simpatico ?real? abductees. As each person tells their story, he realizes he may never know.Holy Lacrimony is classic DeForge?oscillating between shockingly dirty, casually funny and earnestly engaged in the socio-politics of his fictive worlds. Part abstract shape blending and part hieroglyphic storytelling, each image is a discrete and tightly designed object of beauty that never loses the forward motion of the best personal cartooning. DeForge continues to prove that he?s the single most innovative and empathetic cartoonist in the past twenty years.