Comic, Iain Ramsay, [email protected], $5 + $5 postage
If you had a certain kind of dad, you might be familiar with Truly Tasteless Jokes. Growing up, there were a bunch of these thin volumes by Blanche Knott in my house, relics from the early ’70s. They were my number one source for jokes about bestiality, dead babies and (poor, poor) Helen Keller, memorized to shock and horrify my junior high classmates. The four-panel comics in this collection have a similar sensibility, if light-hearted stories about cannibals and stabby chimpanzees can be described as having a “sensibility.” The artwork in Heartless HA HA reminded me a lot of Dr. Katz Professional Therapist, with the characters’ huge round eyes and squiggly outlines, but that is where the similarities end. The content is crude but this collection would probably be a hit at your brother’s 12th birthday party. (Mary Green)