Synopses & Reviews
Remember how baffling, terrifying, and sad childhood really was? Now you can laugh at it. In this thematically and narratively linked series of one-page stories originally published in the "Funny Pages" section throughout the 1970s, the master of the macabre eschewed his usual ghouls, vampires, and end-of-the-world scenarios for a wry, pointed look at growing up normal in the real, yet endlessly weird world. This is essentially a lost Gahan Wilson graphic novel from the 1970s and '80s. Watch as our stoic, hunting-cap-wearing protagonist (known only as "The Kid") copes with illness, disappointment, strange old relatives, the disappointment of Christmas, life-threatening escapades, death, school, the awfulness of camp, and much more -- all delineated in Wilson's roly-poly, sensual, delicately hatched line. If you don't remember what it was like being a child, this book will bring it all back... for good or for ill! This new hardcover edition reprints every single "Nuts" story from the (rescuing over two dozen pages from oblivion), with a critical essay about the strip by Fantagraphics Publisher Gary Groth.
Review
"Gahan Wilson's NUTS is the best, most clear-eyed explanation of and memoir about childhood I've ever read. Small, cramped, perfect drawings that show children as they are -- explorers without a map or a book of instructions in the land of mad giants." Booklist
Review
"The all-time greatest comic strip about what it is to be a child, ever. Insightful, hilarious, poignant and dripping truth from every panel, is, was and ever will be in my pantheon of most life-altering reads. It showed me that comics could be more than just gag-driven. Beautifully drawn and essential to any library of cartoon books." Booklist
Review
"() The scenarios include... normal-enough stuff that holds the potential for humiliation, failure, and maybe worse. In , that potential is always realized and, as memory colors it, so uproariously that you just about choke with laughter. " Ray Olson
Review
"The kids in are vain, covetous, not so very bright, and they stagger around, reeling, from one unpleasant surprise to the next.... Weirdly, by giving his kids the vocabularies of adults, he really . We begin life as we live it now: Dazed, angry, and bitter at our own fundamental lack of control." Noel Murray The A.V. Club
Review
"They're ..., applying Wilson's usual sense of the grotesque and macabre to phenomena like summer camp and sick days. And they're not all bitter either... He mixes the sour and the sweet exceptionally well." Bob Fingerman
Review
"Dense, claustrophobic, intense and , the self-contained strips ranged from satire to slapstick to agonising irony, linking up over the years to form a fascinating catalogue of growing older in the USA: a fearfully faithful alternate view of childhood and most importantly, of how we adults choose to recall those distant days." Paul Constant The Stranger
Review
"Fantagraphics has done readers a great favor by releasing the first full collection of Nuts, the hilarious cult strip by famed Playboy and National Lampoon cartoonist Gahan Wilson. ...[I]t's good to finally have a work of Nuts' caliber and significance collected so future generations can see for themselves that Gahan Wilson was a humorist who 'got it' in no uncertain terms." Win Wiacek Now Read This!
Review
"Nuts is one of the best works, and one of the few single book-length works, by one of our time's best and most idiosyncratic cartoonists -- ...it is for everyone who really remembers how terrible and lonely and infuriating it can be to be a child." Steve Bunche Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
In this thematically and narratively linked series of one-page stories originally published in theNational Lampoon s Funny Pages section throughout the 1970s, the master of the macabre eschewed his usual ghouls, vampires, and end-of-the-world scenarios for a wry, pointed look at growing up normal in the real, yet endlessly weird world. This is essentially a lost Gahan Wilson graphic novel from the 1970s and '80s. Watch as our stoic, hunting-cap-wearing protagonist (known only as The Kid ) copes with illness, disappointment, strange old relatives, the disappointment of Christmas, life-threatening escapades, death, school, the awfulness of camp, and much more all delineated in Wilson s roly-poly, sensual, delicately hatched line If you don t remember what it was like being a child, this book will bring it all back for good or for ill This new hardcover edition reprints every single Nuts story from theLampoon (rescuing over two dozen pages from oblivion), with a critical essay about the strip by Fantagraphics Publisher Gary Groth. "
Synopsis
Remember how baffling, terrifying, and sad childhood really was? Now you can laugh at it.
About the Author
In his ninth decade as a human being and his sixth as a master cartoonist, Gahan Wilson (born dead in 1930) continues to produce cartoons for a variety of magazines including Playboy and The New Yorker.