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Cirkus New Orleans

Remember how everybody was doing autobiographical stuff a few years ago and most of it was just plain dull? It’s hard to write about yourself when you have a boring life, after all. Well, Josh Simmons doesn’t have that problem. This is auto-bio done by a guy who knows some extremely interesting people who have a variety of outrageous habits. Oh yeah, and they’re in a traveling “circus”. Kind of like the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, except he talks about things that I’m pretty sure were never done by those other guys. This is one packed book… layers of artwork and words all over the place. You could probably read this three times before you get everything he was trying to say here, and even then you might not get it in the order he was trying to say it. I read on one of the message boards that this was one of the better books of the year, but I don’t know if I’d go that far. Well, I guess it depends how long the list of best books is. If it’s ten books, hell yeah this is up there. If it’s five books it might have a hard time cracking that list, but it’s still a damned good read. Interesting real life stories are hard to come by in comics outside of Dennis Eichorn, so take advantage of this while you can. Before I get any e-mails, yes, I am aware of the works of Chester Brown, Joe Matt and many others. Most of these people who do those stories well have moved on to fiction, so that doesn’t apply to them any more. Stop arguing with me, just buy the damned book. Get it from Top Shelf or e-mail Josh to see what he has around.