Bumf #1

Joe Sacco brings his razor-sharp draftsmanship to Bumf, this 2014 Fantagraphics release whose cover immediately signals the book's confrontational tone: a heavyset civilian figure, seen from behind, presses a revolver directly to the head of a grimacing soldier in a Pickelhaube helmet, with a ruined cityscape stretching out behind them and a shadowy onlooker at the left edge. The stark two-color palette — dense black linework against a pale pink field framed in bold red — gives the image the unsettling charge of a political cartoon pushed past comfort. If Sacco's meticulously inked cover is any indication, Bumf is a work that doesn't flinch.