If you’ve wondered what the former Coast comic artist has been up to
the last couple of years, this 276-page, glossy, hardcover book will
satisfy your nostalgic longings (it also doubles as a weight. Heavy!).
Spend hours trying to peel back the layers of Bell’s drawings, comics,
typography and mixed-media cardboard pieces, but you’ll always end up
lost—there are no obvious entry points into his maniacally detailed
geography of personal icons, pop-culture teases and wordplay. Imagine
if Heinz Edelmann’s Meanies from Yellow Submarine grew up on
MAD comics, and had a drooling hankering for bacon. Don’t expect
the artist essays to shed any light on the “Gnostic Pizza” series (“not
to be confused with…Mystic Pizza…”), or the meaning of salty
pork products, either. Each page is a new adventure, each “ahtwerk” its
own treasure hunt.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2009.
