Joe Matt Knihy

Through the Lens of a Master Cartoonist One Eye is a collection of paired photographs by Charles Burns that captures the strange undertones of a staggering range of objects and locales. From urban and pristine landscapes to flesh and food, the visual combinations are at the same time ambiguously uneasy and starkly coherent. Sandwiched together without room to breathe, the images are given distinctive symbiotic relationships. In some cases they initially appear as a single picture, while in others the shots are drastically dissimilar; regardless, the results are always complimentary. "Random Selection" juxtaposes the small orange square of a color selector card with an appropriately matched peeling sunburn. Random though they may be, Burns's choices are clearly the product of his unique rationale, carefully arranged into revealing pairs. One Eye is his world digested through a lens, and evidence of the scope of hisvisual language. D+Q presents One Eye as part of its Petits Livres series: affordable art books dedicated to acknowledging the wide variety of talent within the comics community and beyond.

Meet Joe Matt, a talented cartoonist with strong ideas about how life should be lived. He makes no apologies and never compromises. Well, almost never. Actually, Joe Matt is a painfully honest man who doesn't mind admitting - in print, in cartoon form - that he has one or two flaws. Just minor ones. The Poor Bastard is his neurotic, compelling and utterly shameless account of some of the most personal details of his life. With the timing of a stand-up comedian, he leaves no aspect untouched, from the disintegration of personal relationships to the grim realities of life in a Toronto rooming house and his obsession with pornography - or, as Joe prefers, "nature films". Watch as he alienates lovers and friends in a candid and hilarious story about his ruthless quest for a woman who understands him and meets his ridiculous standards. This is Joe Matt: neurotic, compulsive, cheap, self-absorbed - human. And funny.

For over ten years Joe Matt has been notorious in cult circles for the embarrassing frankness with which he reveals his distressing habits and predilections. Utterly shameless and completely self-absorbed, Joe Matt writes with an exhibitionist's enthusiasm for his favorite subject, himself. The first incarnation of Peepshow was these one-page strips in which Joe shows off virtuosity for shocking self-revelation. He is an immature, womanizing, cowardly, cheap, porn freak. He also has crack comic timing and a remarkable gift for (self) caricature. The books of Joe Matt provokes this confession from guys over beer:Oh my god, he's just like me. I think those things but I never say them because my girlfriend would leave me. This diary collection made Joe Matt the hero he is today.