Image: Tom Gauld, Beasts! Book 2
Gabriel Fowler is the owner of Desert Island, our favorite comic book store in Williamsburg; you might remember him as the expert who helped us decode Obama’s Spider-Man obsession. Check in Monday mornings, when he’ll reveal the coolest thing he’s gotten in the store that week.
This second volume of the Beasts! Series brings together world-famous comics artists and illustrators with completely unknown wunderkind. Like the acclaimed first volume, the simple, gratifying theme of monster drawings works amazingly well. Each of the ninety contributing artists were invited to illustrate a real or fictional creature from “diverse authorities, modern and medieval, with varying degrees of reliability.” The results are an impressive cross-section of contemporary illustration, housed in a beautifully designed hardcover book. A must-see!
Fantagraphics has also release Beasts! Book 1 in a softcover edition. It’s not quite as good as volume two, but that’s only because volume two is amazingly good.