Customer Reviews

99% Perspiration: A Frazz Collection

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Humorous AND thought provoking, Frazz provides a moral compass to the kids of Bryson Elementary (and us) on the confusing journey through school and life. Undoubtedly the best written strip today, FRAZZ is also interesting graphically, with a lush ink line and original Sunday strip layouts. Get this book reprinting the strip's early days, and its predecessor, and you will be hooked. Think about Walt Kelly's ultra-classic POGO without the politics and retooled for today. It's clear author Jef Mallett possesses the 1% the title modestly omits.

If you like comics like I do, Frazz is wonderful. He makes you think about things, yet makes you laugh out loud. I can honestly say that I have run for the dictionary a few times, so have learned some new words. :) Frazz is the one adult you always wished you had in your life. He sees things at a childs level and yet can be very adult in his answers without being condesending to the kids.

A wonderful way to spend the day!

If you are not familiar with Frazz (or Mr. Frazier) the Janitor at Bryson Elementary School, let me take a moment to introduce you. Frazz is a triathlete, a song writer, a poet, a literary buff and, surprisingly, a janitor at an elementary school. He is into healthy living, good food, good fun, and loves a good battle ball/eraser fight. He is the shining star of Bryson and is loved by all the kids there. He is a better teacher than some of the other paid staff at the school.

I sometimes think that Frazz is a grown up Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbs)

I really love Frazz. This collection allowed me to catch up on a lot of the old Frazz cartoons. Mr. Mallett's drawing style is very consistent from beginning to end. His humour is always gentle, loving caring, thoughtful and morally sound. The lessons Frazz provides to the kids of Bryson elementary school are deep, valuable, honest, socially responsible, healthy and usually indirect and subtle. If I take the time, I even learn new words from Mr. Mallett.

My teens also love Frazz. Then again, they like Garfield a lot too, so there is no accounting for taste.

My family and I will be reading and re-reading this collection of Frazz cartoons over and over again in the coming weeks.

Gotta love Frazz!

Every elementary school should have this book in the staff lounge for those "down" times when you need to see the humor in what is going on in and around the building.

The daily comic strip is excellent, but to be really appreciated, the strips gathered in one volume and read all in one sitting brings out the genius of Jef Mallet. Frazz is a true Renaissance man, but he is nurturing and pragmatic as well. My school janitor wasn't like that, and I wish he had been.

I enjoyed the comics in this very much, at least as much as the 1st and 3rd Frazz collections. I felt like there was less repetition of gags, or at least there is significant variation within the themes of Caulfield perplexing the teachers, and Frazz exercising to rediculous (for most of us) extremes.

What a wonderful piece of work! Very reminiscent of Walt Kelly's Pogo. Thought provoking yet,warm, sensitive and charming. It is topical in looking a society - the society of children in school. Pogo was more into politics. This is more into life. Look at what you really have and live it to the fullest. I have to restrain myself and ration it a few pages at a time. I do not want this dream to end!! Thanks Jeff.

Once again, Jef Mallett is proving himself to be the best cartoonist drawing these days. I read him on-line on a daily basis, but reading the cartoons sequentially instead of waiting 24 hours between each one (as they were written), gives the stories continuity.
This is an intelligent cartoon strip with sophisticated yet endearing characters. It is both a statement of the shortcomings of education as well as a hope for its future. And its comments on physical fitness are both poignant and humorous.
Buy this book. Keep Jef Mallett in the cartoon business.

Larry Bush

There is no doubt in my mind that Jef Mallett is the finest cartoonist working in the United States today. When the newspaper comes in the morning, before I get my coffee, before I pet the cat, before I do anything else, I read Frazz.

Then, no matter how things go wrong the rest of the day, I have at least started the day with a smile.

Not only is each strip a well-written, clever (and often startlingly ingenious) bit of good, clean fun, Mallett can draw. As other strips tend towards infantile cartooning, Frazz harkens back to an age when the great cartoonists were also superb artists.

Trust me, if you start reading Frazz, you will be hooked.
-Bill McGann, Author of The Story of the Tour de France

Imagine a middle-aged mom wrestling with her two grown sons - over a comic book! I bought the two "Frazz" collections for my husband for Christmas, and had to commandeer them away from our 17- and 20-year-olds so I could wrap them.
Mallett's strip offers "be-a-kid-again" fun; the lovable characters and their escapades are spot-on every time. He also presents valuable attitude checks with a light touch. Our paper does not carry the "Frazz" strip, so finding the books amounted to discovering buried treasure. We all loved every page.