5 out of 5

Black and white, collecting all self-contained humor strips from all sides of Fanta’s comedy content – from the perverse (Ivan Brunetti, Johnny Ryan) to the weird (Marc Bell’s ‘Worn Tuff Elbow’) to the classic (‘Love and Rockets’) to the autobiographical (…humorous? David B.) to the cute (Jason).  Issue 1’s inside front cover intro explains Fantagraphics and then politely says ‘welcome to the show’, while issue 2 lays it out clearly, that the point of these things is to get you interested in the content.  Both issues have wonderfully concise, strip-by-strip biographies for each creator, with a mention of from which book or collection the included strip was culled (an important detail anthology books frequently forget).  Book 1 goes for more of a big picture approach (this is everything we carry), while Book 2 focuses on foreign talents, or smaller, new acquisitions to the stable.

The stock is thick and very white, making for clear reproductions of all the work, and each book is a solid 32 pages.  The strips are all well chosen to be representative of the creator and concise enough to not leave you feeling either left out of the joke or needing more pages before you get to the punchline.

Each of these books makes me want to check out about half of what it’s previewing, and I enjoyed reading the other half.  I even enjoyed reading bits from what I own, as Funny Book is like a well-sequenced and paced best-of compilation.

It’s also exactly how a sample anthology should be made.