Booklist Reviews ATTITUDE 3

The influential book publishing industry magazine BOOKLIST has reviewed ATTITUDE 3: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ONLINE CARTOONISTS:

Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists. Ed. by Ted Rall. Aug. 2006. 128p. illus. NBM, paper, $13.95 (1-56163-465-4). 741.5.
The third set of Rall's profiles of cartoonists he dubs subversive focuses on artists plying their trade online. Mostly unable to break into alternative weeklies, these new cartoonists use the Internet as their venue. A few get paid for simultaneous print appearances, but most self-publish, which allows them the freedom to be more radical than their dead-tree counterparts. Steven L. Cloud's webcomics consist solely of a dialogue between a head on a stick and a blank-faced snake. As Rall aptly notes, the visual style of Eric Millikin's Fetus-X "crosses Edvard Munch with an incipient victim of high school suicide." Unfortunately, lack of editorial intermediation permits drawing styles including the primitive to the downright crude. The technology doesn't even require real drawing ability. Several of the represented cartoonists rely on digital cutting and pasting, and Michael Zole's strips just show two quarter-circles ("1" and "2") conversing. But the standouts*Mark Fiore's flash-animated political cartoons and Nicholas Gurewitch's perversely gentle Perry Bible Fellowship*are unique and personal. **Gordon Flagg

Pick up this essential guide to some of the coolest new cartoonists around at your local bookstore or online.