From Booklist
Since the demise of the groundbreaking Raw nearly a decade ago, the vaguely annual Blab has become the premier showcase for comics as art. The latest edition features leading names in the field and some promising newcomers. Standouts include Peter Kuper's paean to porn, Al Columbia's vision of the Apocalypse that resembles an old black-and-white Max Fleischer film cartoon, Spain's autobiographical story of a visit to a degenerate carny, Richard Sala's take on German expressionistic film, Pamela Butler's feverishly sexual Red Riding Hood drawings (mature readers only here), and a Rocket Sam tale by Chris Ware, who does more in two pages than most artists can accomplish in an entire graphic novel. Raw mainstay Gary Panter makes his Blab debut with an uncharacteristic, rather inconsequential illustration. But why does editor Beauchamp fill the volume out with mundane essays on boxer Jack Johnson and R & B singer Jackie Wilson? (Drew Friedman's caricature almost redeems the latter, though.) Aside from such prose miscues, the only bad thing about Blab is the long wait between volumes. Gordon Flagg
