Foolbert Funnies: Histories and Other Fictions

Stack (Our Cancer Year) was one of the mainstays in the underground comix movement; his collection The Adventures of Jesus, published in 1964 under the name “Foolbert Sturgeon,” may even have been the very first underground comic book. This anthology shows the variety of Stack’s concerns, including basically good-natured spoofs of mainstream comics icons such as Superman and the Phantom; speculations about the fate of troubled geniuses such as Van Gogh, Shakespeare, and Caravaggio; and savage portraits of contemporary small-minded politicians. Over the years, Stack’s style has loosened into a combination of energetic brushstrokes and meticulous but vigorous crosshatching, wonderfully effective in pieces such as the action-packed “Amazons.” Overall, from the acerbic satire on academic bureaucrats in “The Chancellor!” (1970) to the sneering “Patriotism for Dummies” (2003), Stack demonstrates that his indignation at lazy, shallow thinking hasn’t faded at all. An important, exhilarating book. (Jan.)