The new Beetle Moses collection of cartoons by Harris Fishman is an attractive package. It’s got a hot-pink hardcover book featuring monkeys driving a truck full of bananas off a cliff. One wonders if Fishman is familiar with the famous list of seven items guaranteed to sell a comic:
Maybe Fishman had no idea. Every generation has to go through its own learning process.
Fishman is a cartoonist who is clearly influenced by Gary Larson’s The Far Side. You can see occasional visual homages tucked into the panels—a character seen from the back will have Larson’s signature protruding lips and bulbous nose, for instance—and the comedy is very much in line with The Far Side’s bizarre juxtapositions. While Larson used single panels to great effect, Fishman sticks with two or three.
I’m glad I took Beetle Moses out from the library because I’m not sure if this is a book I’d dig into frequently. Fishman relies on surprise and discovery to deliver his punchlines, and once you’re familiar with one of his gags it loses most of its value. But there’s nobody in the business today who draws better chaos. A UFO crash, a giant squid attack, a rampaging horde of monkeys—Fishman perfectly captures the moment when things collapse. It’s a real talent, and one that I hope he continues to develop in the future. I suspect that he’s got a longform comics project inside of him that I hope he lets loose one day. I can’t wait to see how that chaos looks after twenty or thirty pages of slow buildup.
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