FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
CARTOONIST/COVER: Dame Darcy
ISBN: #1-56097-532-6 $22.95

In her foreword to DAME DARCY'S MEATCAKE COMPILIATION, comedienne Margaret Cho talks about how she is taken by cartoonist Dame Darcy's saying that good art is a like spell. Writers and musicians including Alan Moore, Poppy Z. Brite, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth are all taken by Darcy's magic.

Her work is strange and unlike anything else in comics. Of course people often say that about many comic book creators, because those people are fans whose range of reading material is quite narrow. Like Daniel Clowes or Chester Brown, Dame Darcy is stunningly and shockingly original, a total sin in a marketplace of ideas where almost all art and entertainment wear the same five boxes.

Dame Darcy's work takes a little while to be digestible. It's that proverbial acquired taste, and the taste is hard to acquire when you keep feeling like you want to throw up. When the mind finally grasps what Darcy is doing, however, you'll like it so much that you might slap yourself.

This compilation gathers the best of seven issues from Darcy's MEATCAKE comic published by the fine folks at [url=link]Fantagraphics[/url]. Yes, Ms. Cho, this is a spell. This is magical storytelling, at once familiar because it borrows the forms of fairy tales and fables and then because the Dame pushes you into an entirely new world of comic book storytelling. If you liked the short fantasy tales of Neil Gaiman's ENDLESS NIGHTS, then, you'll likely be down with this. From the horrific and heartbreaking tale of a father's grief and revenge, "Stained Glass" to the sweetly banal "Cosy Corner," there is something for anyone hungry to see a beautiful example of what an adventurous cartoonist can do.

Inventive, invigorating, ridiculous, sublime, farcical, wretched, harebrained, and appalling - there's thesaurus of big words ready to describe the embarrassment of riches within this volume. No lover of comics, alleged or genuine, can not have this on the shelf.