{"id":1544,"date":"2007-12-05T13:23:22","date_gmt":"2007-12-05T13:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=1544"},"modified":"2007-12-05T13:25:20","modified_gmt":"2007-12-05T13:25:20","slug":"mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/12\/05\/mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Mean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/mean.jpg\" alt=\"Mean\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By <strong>Steven Weissman<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)<br \/>\nISBN13: 978-1-56097-866-4<\/p>\n<p>If there is such a thing as &#8216;Dark and Comforting&#8217; then the weird and wicked cartooning of Steven Weissman is a perfect example. Following the success of such books as <strong>Chewing Gum in Church<\/strong> and <strong>Kid Firechief<\/strong> Fantagraphics have compiled earlier works from his self-published comic <strong>Yikes!<\/strong>, supplemented with other rare and even unpublished strips to create a lovely insight into the development of a truly unique graphic vision.<\/p>\n<p>The 32 tales, created between 1993 to 2002, all feature his cast of peculiar children in a macabre tribute to Charles Shulz&#8217;s <em>Peanuts<\/em> strip, but are also literal embodiments of the phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u0153little monsters\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. In simple childhood romps such as &#8216;The See-Thru Boy&#8217;, &#8216;The Loneliest Girl in Town&#8217;, &#8216;Inevitable Time-Travel Story&#8217;, &#8216;No Kiss!&#8217; and many others the bizarre cast of Li&#8217;l Bloody (a child vampire), Kid Medusa, Pullapart Boy and X-Ray Spence live an idyllically suburban 1950&#8217;s existence of school, fishing, skateboards, white picket fences, aliens, wheelchair jousting, marbles and weird science. Weissman&#8217;s seductive cast all have huge round heads and ancient bodies like graphic progeria-sufferers, but the drawing is lavish, seductive and utterly convincing.<\/p>\n<p>These are great comics about kids (but categorically Not For Kids) that are a treat, a revelation and most definitely darkly comforting.<\/p>\n<p>MEAN \u00c2\u00a9 2007 Fantagraphics Books. All content \u00c2\u00a9 2007 Steven Weissman. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Steven Weissman (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN13: 978-1-56097-866-4 If there is such a thing as &#8216;Dark and Comforting&#8217; then the weird and wicked cartooning of Steven Weissman is a perfect example. Following the success of such books as Chewing Gum in Church and Kid Firechief Fantagraphics have compiled earlier works from his self-published comic Yikes!, supplemented &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/12\/05\/mean\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mean&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-novels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4AFj-mean","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}