“Putting together the new UNDERWORLD collection with Kaz was something of a revelation to me. Although I’ve loved the strip for over two decades now, and enthusiastically greenlit the book the moment that Kaz pitched the idea to me, I’d honestly forgotten just how good of a cartoonist Kaz is, and how great of a strip UNDERWORLD is. It’s a singularly great comic strip, one of the last in a dying breed: the alt-weekly strip, which operated free of the editorial constraints of the big syndicates. It reads like a profane, postmodern, punk apotheosis of many of the best strips of the 20th Century, notably Segar’s Thimble Theater, Bushmiller’s Nancy, and Gould’s Dick Tracy. Though the format may seem increasingly anachronistic, Underworld‘s content remains as potent as anything the medium has produced over the past quarter-century. In other words, it’s a fucking hoot, and if you’ve never read it, you’re in for a treat. –Eric Reynolds.”
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