Is er iets? #806

Peter van Straaten's Is er iets? — "Is something wrong?" — arrives from Rainbow Pockets in 2005 as a compact collection of his signature observational humor. The cover sets the tone perfectly: a loose, intimate pen-and-ink vignette of two figures seated at a table in a domestic interior, the quietly tense body language between them hinting at the understated everyday comedy van Straaten does so well. With every line of art and text the work of a single author-illustrator, this is Dutch cartooning at its most personal and quietly perceptive.