Product Description

"One of the five best features in any newspaper, period." --The Comics Reporter

"A much-needed jolt of energy to the daily newspaper. We have a real talent here." --Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes

"One of the few strips around where nearly every individual panel is stand-alone delight." --The Onion

"...it really seems like the inheritor of 'Calvin and Hobbes.'" --Art Spiegelman

"I can't say enough in his favor, so much is my admiration for his work." --Pat Oliphant

2 National Cartoonist Society "Best Comic Strip" nominations in 2 years of existence.

"I thought the best newspaper comic strips were long gone, and I've never been happier to be wrong. Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac has it all--intelligence, gentle humor, a delightful way with words, and, most surprising of all, wonderful, wonderful drawings.

Cul de Sac's whimsical take on the world and playful sense of language somehow gets funnier the more times you read it. Four-year-old Alice and her Blisshaven Preschool classmates will ring true to any parent. Doing projects in a cloud of glue and glitter, the little kids manage to reinterpret an otherwise incomprehensible world via their meandering, nonstop chatter. But I think my favorite character is Alice's older brother, Petey. A haunted, controlling milquetoast, he's surely one of the most neurotic kids to appear in comics. These children and their struggles are presented affectionately, and one of the things I like best about Cul de Sac is its natural warmth. Cul de Sac avoids both mawkishness and cynicism and instead finds genuine charm in its loopy appreciation of small events. Very few strips can hit this subtle note.

I also like the nightmarish suburb that the Otterloop ("outer loop") family inhabits: the identical houses crammed in endless rows, the relentless highway traffic strangling the soulless development, the ugly shopping malls, the oppressive parking garages, and sticky-floored restaurants. Like most of us, the family negotiates this modern awfulness as a simple matter of course; the critique appears only in the drawings, where the strip suddenly works on another level.

And oh, those gorgeous drawings! With a mix of rambling looseness, blotchy crudeness, and sheer cartoony grace, Thompson's expressive pen line is the equal of any of cartooning's Old Masters. Thompson has a very sharp eye and a command of technique we almost never see anymore. He reminds us that comics can be more than illustrated gag writing, and that good drawings can bring a comic strip's world to life in countless ways that words cannot. The artwork in Cul de Sac bowls me over. It's a pleasure to study long after the strips are read.

The first fifty pages of this book are taken from the earlier incarnation of Cul de Sac that appeared in the Washington Post Magazine. Here we discover that Thompson has a natural flair for watercolor painting too. At this point, however, I'm not even surprised.

I hope you enjoy Cul de Sac as much as I do. I think you're in for a real treat." --Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, 2008

Alice Otterloop brings the funny to suburbia in Cul de Sac, "a suburban community ringed by a mighty wall and girded

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #220391 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780740776519
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Richard Thompson's illustrations have appeared in U.S. News and World Report, the New Yorker, National Geographic, and the Atlantic Monthly. He has received numerous illustration awards, including the National Cartoonists Society's Magazine and Book Illustration Award, and is also the creator of Richard's Poor Almanac. He resides with his family in Arlington, VA.

Customer Reviews

Best New Comic-Strip in Years!
I love good comic-strips-- there's just not a lot of good comic-strips to love lately. "Pickles", "Get Fuzzy", "Pearls Before Swine", "Dilbert", "Bizarro", "PVP"...

And top of the list: CUL DE SAC.

This is a brilliant, hilarious strip with wonderful drawings-- some of the best art (and cartooning craft) appearing on the comics page today. Alice and her neurotic brother, Petey, each have "rich inner lives" (as my wife would say), and the world is always much more interesting when seen through their eyes. Absolute genius! You ask me, the fact that Bill Watterson wrote the introduction-- ASKED to write it, I've heard-- says it all.

Big Bonus in this Book: about 50 pre-syndicated Cul De Sac "Sunday" strips reproduced from Thompson's hand-watercolored originals! Stunningly beautiful!

If this strip isn't in your newspaper-- get it! If you don't own this book-- buy it! (And believe me-- it's a steal at this price!) Let's make sure this strip gets all the attention and recognition it deserves so Richard Thompson can tease and torment his characters (and entertain us) for decades to come!

Wonderful!
The first thing you notice about Richard Thompson's Cul De Sac is its wonderful art. Expressive and unique, this strip looks like nothing else on the comics page. But what makes the strip truly special is its writing. It is a real breath of fresh air- especially when you compare it to what we see elsewhere. The children in Thompson's work are not the miniature joke machines of sit- coms, nor are they adults in kid suits or even a middle aged man's sentimental idealizations of youth. Thompson's characters are instead real children who think and interact with the world around them in ways that most of us forgot about somewhere along the road to adulthood. But Thompson remembers and best yet he somehow manages to make it all laugh out loud funny. This is a wonderful book.

Fresh and funny
This collection of Cul de Sac comic strips is full of brilliant use of the comic form, fresh takes on the comedy of family life, and laugh out loud moments. My 13 and 10 year old children enjoyed it as much as I did.