Category: Art

Dave Cooper’s Mudbite is new in glorious full-color hardback from Fantagraphics. Here is the front cover:

And here is the other front cover (Mudbite is a tête-bêche):

I hope to post a review of Mudbite at The Comics Journal soon, but for now, here’s Fantagraphics’ blurb:

Eddy Table, the star of Mudbite, first appeared the early ’90s in Cooper’s award-winning underground comics series, Weasel. His stories were based on baffling dreams and reveled in a unique sort of logical nonsense. Mudbitecompiles two all-new Eddy Table stories, “Mud River” and “Bug Bite,” in which Eddy returns to his roots, acting as Dave’s alter ego in these dreamlike narratives.

In “Mud River,” Eddy makes a foolish mistake, causing a sweet, innocent Amazon to bonk her head, turning her into a very impressionable automaton. Of course, Eddy can’t resist taking advantage of this unexpected development, even as a river of mud approaches. In “Bug Bite,” Eddy has brought his family on a vacation to Europe, but he’s soon distracted by a series of manifestations of his own obsessions  — voluptuous women, mysterious and collectible “microdevices,”  and a strange, impromptu jam session. When he loses his family entirely, he’s led into a dark, slimy corridor inhabited by shiny black eels. What is their connection to the microdevices? And how will all this impact his family?

Mudbite marks the first new graphic novel by fan favorite Dave Cooper in more than 15 years, marking a welcome return to the medium that he made his name in before focusing on fine art and television, where he has focused most of his creative energy since.