Gnartoons

by James the Stanton

Overview

The long-awaited collection of James the Stanton's beloved Gnartoons comics is here! Drink a 40 with a skateboarding dog, light a cop car on fire with a herd of friendly forest critters, and eat a pizza brunch with a bunch of radical dinosaurs. Stanton's trademark trippy humor wriggles and shines its way through each lushly illustrated comic vignette, now lovingly presented in a deluxe hardcover.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945509414
Publisher:	Silver Sprocket
Publication date:	05/15/2022
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

James Stanton is a Seattle cartoonist and the creator of Gnartoons.

Editorial Reviews

01/17/2022

This boisterous collection presenting Stanton’s long-running alt-weekly and online comics offers a heady mix of underground comix experimentation, punk anti-style, and wry observations on the Seattle alternative scene, all seasoned with a dash of MAD Magazine. It’s a trip into a psychedelic world of drunken forest gnomes, jaded cartoon animals, gloopy space aliens, and junkyard hobos. The cast includes the Squatters of Trash Island and the deeply tongue-in-cheek Radical Dinosaurrr Pizza Brunch (“Dinosaurs’ voices sound exactly like wicked guitar solos”). Weird adventures through weirder landscapes are punctuated by drunken arguments and stoned conversations about ephemera. Stanton’s squelchy art, often drenched in eye-gouging colors, shows a strong R. Crumb influence, and much like Crumb, he’s a more disciplined artist than his visual excesses and gross-out humor might suggest at first glance; he plays with optical illusions and fourth wall–breaking visuals, making creatures crawl and sprawl over panels. (One character complains, “These 3D panels can really mess with a cartoon character’s sense of space.”) He’s equally comfortable drawing precise pen-and-ink illustrations of the foliage in the Pacific Northwest and a comic about a punk band carried off by rats. Swarming with monsters and madness, this retrospective captures a volatile talent. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Swarming with monsters and madness, this retrospective captures a volatile talent." – Publishers Weekly

“Reading James Stanton's Gnartoons collection is like finding the most glorious and delicious psychedelic mushroom in the forest and gobbling it straight out of the ground." – Josh Simmons (Black River)

"Comics need to remain pliable, playful and off-kilter. It does my heart good to see this spirit so strong and delightful in Stanton’s work." – The Comic Journal

From the Publisher