Mome #15

Fantagraphics' literary anthology Mome returns with its Spring 2009 installment, Vol. 15, and Andrice Arp's cover sets a striking tone — a crowd of identical, blue-coated figures in tall top hats surges forward, mouths open, against a pale green sky with streaks of light above them. There's something simultaneously absurdist and unsettling about the image, that sense of a faceless mass in motion that underground and alternative comics do so well. At $14.99, this volume continues Mome's tradition of gathering some of the most thoughtful voices in contemporary cartooning between two covers.