Catmull, Ben – Paper Theater

Website

Paper Theater

I put a link up to this guy a few weeks ago because I really liked what I saw on his home page (which is down as of 11/18/03, but I have no idea if that is a permanent thing), but I also knew that his comic was coming soon so I wouldn’t do a page until I saw his book. Well, I’ve seen it now, and I’m impressed. It’s a series of short stories about a variety of different things. His ability to go from creepy to laugh-out-loud funny is amazing. It starts with the subtly disquieting “Emily” (about two childhood friends) and goes from that right to “All Zombies Attack!”, which is funny as hell. It’s basically all about every living creature getting turned into a zombie and Death running around frantically trying to make sure that everything that is supposed to be dead stays dead. Funny stuff. I’m not going to analyze the whole damned thing, it’s a pretty big book. Other stories include an astronaut going to hell accidentally, a man trying to find a bottle of whiskey while being tormented by a dead kitty that he didn’t kill, and a taxidermist who breaks his glasses in the middle of the night with disastrous results. Sometimes funny and sometimes at least slightly disturbing, this one’s a fun read all the way through. Go ahead and visit his page, he has all kinds of samples up.