5 out of 5

300 pages of delight.  There’s definitely a bit of ‘The Far Side’ in Ben Dewey’s 500-entry ‘Tragedy Series’ – with anthropomorphism the name of the game, trading Larsen’s cow obsession with a predilection for reptiles and insects.  The pitch is that each slide or panel – lovingly layed out in sepia tones with a Victorian vibe – details a particular tragedy.  But these aren’t, exactly, the ‘tragedies’ that would probably come to a normal mind; rather, we get illustrations with captions like ‘lungfish foreclosure,’ or ‘the musk ox mob owns the streets.’  Some of the jokes are just liteal takes on puns, but when flipping through, as soon as you feel like the concept has run out of steam, Dewey will let loose with a stream flowing from left field.  It’s a book that keeps you saying “just one more,” and is equally as funny a second or third time through.  To break things up, we also get 26 “sadness reprieves” – non-tragedies, randomly disperesed throughout.  Fear not, though, these are equally strange and humorous.

Rounding things out to feel more like a book than the Tumblr project it apparently originally originated as, Dewey gives us a full-on sequential strip at book’s end – “Lady Excelsior & Friends in The Curious Case of Judgement’s Unblinking Eye” – which acts as an origin for the production of the series.

A perfect coffee table book, or a perfect gift, it doesn’t matter.  It’s something that should be in any collection and can work for many types – young, old, goofy, dour – granted they all, occasionally, like to laugh.