Le gouffre de la piscine #[nn]

Published by Les Requins Marteaux in 2001, this French album from Captain Cavern announces itself with a wonderfully unhinged cover: two wide-eyed, slack-jawed teenagers stare in horror as a dripping, grotesque yellow creature erupts from a swirling psychedelic vortex above them, the entire scene crackling with hallucinatory green energy and warped, melting forms. The title Le gouffre de la piscine — "The Pool Abyss" — sets a perfectly queasy tone, and Cavern's raw, feverish linework handles every aspect of the cover, from inking to coloring to lettering. If you have a taste for underground-inflected French comics with a gloriously stomach-turning sense of humor, this one is hard to resist.