Coffee with Sinistar
by Stephen Notley
Leftover Books

Cartoons are a misunderstood medium.

In the many years since their ascent from the primordial slime of strips like "The Yellow Kid" and "Andy Capp", cartoons have reached billions of people with their humor, immediacy and brilliantly telegraphed emotion. And while comics like Peanuts and the occaisionally sublime "Marmaduke" have been able to show people glimpses of cartooning's potential, it is only in the last decade or so that cartoons have begun to come into their own as an art.

Chris Ware's "Acme Comics" are among the most poignant, strange and beautifully crafted bits of art to pop onto the scene since the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Evan Dorkin's rampagingly hilarious "Milk & Cheese" changed the face of college cartooning (and cartoon pop-culture satire) forever. And, perhaps most significantly, Art Spiegelman made the enourmous breakthrough from underground cartoonist (after considerable toiling in the trenches with the likes of R. Crumb and Bill Griffith) to cause celebré with the publication of his deservedly acclaimed "Maus I&II".

The bad news is that Bob the Angry Flower isn't "Maus." The good news is that it doesn't try to be, and that it's a (completely different) example of cartooning at its finest.

And while no one likes a reviewer who suddenly lapses into the first person, a journalist (specifically: me) is about to do exactly that. "Coffee with Sinistar" is the first book of cartoons I have read straight through, over and over again, since getting my hands on the first few editions of "Milk & Cheese," back in my vulnerable high school days. Stephen Notley's "Bob the Angry Flower" picks up where "Milk & Cheese" left off. The same manic energy and freewheeling absurdity dominates his cartoons - it's hard not to be genuinely surprised (and/or amused, and/or baffled) with the sheer absurd killing power of his comics.

"Coffee with Sinistar" is less a collection of comic strips than a container of hundreds of short (albeit absurd) stories. Although Notley's strips are pleasingly unhinged, they tend to contain complete plot arcs, using characters that are vivid enough to stick in one's mind, without being so deep as to complicate the series of jokes that make up the heart of his work.

There's no doubt that Notley, who has written/drawn Bob the Angry Flower for publications including The Edmonton Sun, The Edmonton Journal, See Magazine and Flak's arch-enemy, brunching.com is onto something really really good. Now it's a race against time — can he break through to the popular market before the brilliance of Bob the Angry Flower flickers out, exhausted by public indifference and ignorance?

Perhaps he will. One can only hope — and read the damn cartoon.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)