The ever-prestigious Sequential Tart gives ATTITUDE 2 a 9 out of 10 score:
Sadly, I think this is the last review I’ll be writing for Tart. Perhaps it’s appropriate that the book I’m reviewing is about attitude, subversion, and alternatives to the mainstream in a section of graphic art. Just as Tart was once the “new subversive alternative” web site, the cartoonists interviewed in this book are true radicals in a very conservative world.
Lavishly illustrated with some of the funniest, most honest, and provocative cartoons you’re going to see anywhere, the book featured some of the cartoonists I read most regularly and admire most. The mix of interview subjects is diverse, both in terms of gender and race. I was so grateful to see some of my favorite female cartoonists featured that I just about cried. Emily S. Flake (Lulu Eightball), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Marian Henley (Maxine — I adore this cartoon series!) are just some of the women featured here. So many creative women in one setting! Things are changing! Slowly. But changing, they are.
I should also mention that I also like a lot of the men featured here, too. Keith Knight (The K Chronicles), Shannon Wheeler (of the classic Too Much Coffee Man), Aaron McGruder (Boondocks, the best comic strip of its kind since Bloom County), and David Rees (Get Your War On, the comic strip collection that helped me come to grip with the insanity of the post 9/11 world) are all featured here.
I was rather pleased to find that I’ve read the work about 2/3rds of the people featured in the book and am fans of most of them. On a personal note, it choked me up a bit to find that Tak Yoyoshima is now an alternative cartoonist, as I remember his name from back in the day when Tart started. I mean, how many people called Tak do you know?
You need this book. If you don’t support works like this, you’re hopelessly mainstream, square, unhip, and reactionary. Bad things to be, folks. Blow your mind open with Attitude and Attitude 2. The mind you save may be your own.
My pals at Seattle’s Eat the State! have this to say:
Aaron McGruder is just one of the cartoonists featured and interviewed in Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists, edited by Ted Rall. Others include Max Cannon (Red Meat); Keith Knight (The K Chronicles, [th]ink); Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For); David Rees (Get Your War On); Marian Henley (Maxine!); Brian Sendelbach (Smell of Steve, Inc.); and Stephen Notley (Bob the Angry Flower)–21 artists in all. Rall interviews each cartoonist about their craft, providing an interesting inside view of the life of alternative cartooning, and offers a few pages of selected strips by each one. Attitude 2 follows on the success of Rall’s first Attitude anthology, which was slightly more focused on political cartooning; the second anthology is slightly more eclectic, but the political content is still strong. Many of these cartoonists are only published in a few alternative city weeklies around the country, so this anthology does a great service by bringing together the cream of contemporary cartooning that most of us never get to see. The large-format book is available for $13.95 from NBM Publishing, http://www.nbmpublishing.com. –Lansing Scott
