Take a Joke (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781606994641)

Johnny Ryan's transgressive masterpiece Prison Pit has been the talk of alt-comics circles for the past year since its debut in the summer of 2009. But before Prison Pit, Ryan garnered a considerable following via his one-man humor anthology (which doubled as a one-man War Against Political Correctness) Angry Youth Comix. Take a Joke collects many of the best stories from this inimitable series as well as many strips created for the wildly-popular Vice magazine, to which Ryan has contributed for years.

Unlike Ryan's previous collections, which focused on very short stories, Take a Joke spotlights several of the artist's longest humor pieces to date, notably: "Graveyard Goofs," in which Ryan's hapless antiheroes Sinus O'Gynus and Loady McGee exhume the corpse of the recently-deceased Santa Claus as part of a Top Secret experiment, fantasize an orgy with a collection of anthropomorphic condiment bottles (resulting in an unwanted pregnancy), and end up in Hell; "Boobs Pooter's Jokepocalypse," starring a coprophiliac version of Godzilla who destroys the world with hilarious jokes and crazy pranks; and "The World's Funniest Joke," a 24-page masterpiece that makes The Aristocrats look like a Nora Ephron film.

All this plus Cheeseburger Chase, Omletta DuPont, and "The Day The New Yorker Came to Town"!

Author: Johnny Ryan
ISBN-10: 1606994646
ISBN-13: 9781606994641
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Language: English
Published: 06/15/2011
Pages: 128
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.90h x 6.90w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 06/01/2011 pg. 51