From Lone Mountain
John Porcellino, 240 pgs,Drawn & Quarterly, drawnandquarterly.com,$22.95 USD/$24.95 CDN
Ah, a new King-Cat collection! Reading King-Cat Comics is like sitting on a back porch swapping stories with a close friend on a beautiful Spring day. Birds are chirping, flowers are pushing through the dirt and your friend is telling you stories about a bunch of stuff that happened to them. Sometimes the happenings are sad, sometimes they are funny, sometimes it’s just life, man — but all the stories are told with a gentle good humour that makes you smile, think, and appreciate life with all its twists and turns.
To read King-Cat is to sit with John Porcellino and quietly listen as he tells you about the things he’s observed, but not in a Seinfeldian “Did you ever notice how…” kind of way. John isn’t playing life for laughs, although there are smiles a-plenty in this collection. Porcellino immerses you in a world of fields and clouds and endless highways, trees and grass and distant skylines. To read these comics is to slow down, breathe, and take a break from a hyper-digitized world. Why click on the latest bot bait when instead you can shut it all off, go outside and watch a squirrel eat a nut? This collection rounds up King-Cat Comics #62 – 68, from 2003 to 2007. But really these comics are fresh and timeless and will reward multiple re-readings. Viva King-Cat! Long live the King!