The Big Book of Hell [A Life in Hell Collection] #[nn]

Matt Groening's anarchic underground sensibility is on full display in this 1990 Pantheon collection, whose cover features a lively scene of rubbery white rabbit characters, a red-dressed female rabbit with a bow, and a matching pair of wide-eyed twin boys in fezzes and yellow-and-red zigzag shirts holding hands beneath a cheerful blue sky. The deliberately crude, energetic linework captures everything that made Groening's Life in Hell strip such a beloved fixture of alternative weeklies — equal parts absurdist mayhem and oddly tender charm. A genuinely fun gathering of strips from one of alternative comics' most distinctive voices.