Urban Hipster #2

The cover of this Alternative Comics anthology lays out its pleasures right up front — art, music, alcohol, and pinball — illustrated with three cheerful vignettes: a painter's brush mid-stroke, a cat strumming a guitar in a suit, and a pair of red cups on a bar table. The main cover scene depicts a figure at what appears to be a laundromat or utility room window, surrounded by blue birds pecking around outside, giving the whole thing a charmingly mundane, slice-of-city-life feel. Greg Stump and David Lasky deliver exactly the kind of easygoing urban storytelling that made 2003 alternative comics such a rewarding corner of the medium.