Stroppy
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- €12.99
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- €12.99
Publisher Description
The first full length graphic novel from the author of Shrimpy and Paul
Enter the strange and wordplay-loving world of cartoonist and fine artist Marc Bell (Shrimpy and Paul, Hot Potatoe), where the All-Star Schnauzer Band runs things and tiny beings hold signs saying “It’s under control.”
Our hapless hero Stroppy is minding his business, working a menial job in one of Monsieur Moustache’s factories, when a muscular fellah named Sean blocks up the assembly line. Sean’s there to promote an All-Star Schnauzer Band-organized songwriting contest, which he does enthusiastically, and at the expense of Stroppy’s livelihood, home, and face. In hopes for a cash prize, Stroppy submits a work by his friend Clancy The Poet to the contest. Mishaps and hilarity ensue and Stroppy is forced to go deep into the heart of Schnauzer territory to rescue his poet friend.
Stroppy is Marc Bell’s triumphant return to comics; it’s also his first full-length graphic novella, one that thrums with jokes, hashtags, and made-up song lyrics. Densely detailed not-so-secret underground societies, little robots, and heavy weight humdingers leap off the page in full color. With Stroppy, Bell continues to explode the divide between fine art, doodling, and comics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canadian cartoonist Bell steps back into the comics world after spending time focusing on the fine art pursuits that populated his 2009 collection, Hot Potatoe. This volume marks Bell's first graphic novella, but in many ways the book takes on a long form comic strip-like framing, right down to the title text at the top of each page, which offers contextual exposition. Stroppy maintains the familiar, old timey cartooning style that defined Bell's signature work, Shrimpy and Paul, combined with a love for goofy word play and progressively more complex scenery as the pages fly by. In fact, one suspects that Bell is, at times, less interested in his book's central plot involving a songwriting contest than in finding excuses to construct surrealist anthropomorphic Rube Goldberg machinery. Thankfully, the scenery is plenty interesting by itself.
