Suckle The Status of Basil

From the id of Dave Cooper, creator of the critically-acclaimed Weasel comic book series from Fantagraphics and a designer of the Futurama television series on Fox, comes a surreal and unpredictable travelogue through a wholly unique cartoon universe that is both elegantly dream-like and grotesquely nightmarish. Suckle is Cooper's first major graphic novel, originally published in 1997 and unavailable for over three years. Since then, he has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed new cartoonists of the last ten years, winning multiple Ignatz and Harvey Awards for Weasel, which debuted in 1999 and has been Fantagraphics' most successful new series since the debut of Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library in 1993. Suckle spotlights Cooper's fascination with the surreal, sexual, and organic, and is reminiscent of the otherworldly dream logic of Jim Woodring's ''Frank'' stories. Suckle's protagonist, Basil, is born from a strange vulvic eruption in the desert. As his afterbirth is nibbled away by a myriad of outlandish scavengers, Basil naively sets out on a tangled, twisted quest for either a mother figure or a romantic interest. Cooper's bizarre and explicit themes and allegorically-rich imagery converge in an arresting, almost-psychedelic, literal and figurative climax from which Basil can begin to make sense of the world and his place in it. Printed on colored paper with limited two-color printing in parts, Suckle is as much a visual feast as it is a compelling fiction.