From Publishers Weekly
Guest-editing Dave Eggers's literary journal, Jimmy Corrigan cartoonist Ware has assembled a beautifully designed anthology of contemporary art comics, with a few vintage treats thrown in, including an excerpt from "Obadiah Oldbuck"—an 1842 publication that's arguably the first American comic book—and a series of very rough sketches by Charles Schulz. A few pieces have recently been published elsewhere (including excerpts from Mark Beyer's loopy, design-heavy Amy and Jordan and Joe Sacco's comics essay on Sarajevo, The Fixer), but the book is a superb introduction to the best American cartoonists working today. Some of them, including Richard McGuire and Mark Newgarden, haven't published much since the heyday of RAW in the late 1980s and early '90s; others, like Lynda Barry and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, are prolific creators at the top of their form. As Ira Glass points out in his introduction, Ware seems to believe cartooning gets no respect at all, and his McSweeney's is a passionate defense of the medium. Ware has included work by artists with an impressively varied range of visual styles and narrative techniques. And Ware's own contribution is brilliant: the book's cover unfolds into a gigantic "comics supplement" of his bitter little cartoons, with extra, tiny comic books by Ron Regé Jr. and John Porcellino tucked into its folds. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13 is all comics. It is edited by Chris Ware (author of Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth), and features so many artists to know and love: R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, and on and on. The issue also includes essays from Michael Chabon, Ira Glass, John Updike, Chip Kidd, and others. A hardcover, clothbound edition, this quarterly comes with an enormous dust jacket that does much more than guard against dust. This one makes our throats go tight.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This issue is all comics. It is edited by Chris Ware (author of Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth ), and features so many artists to know and love: R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, and on and on. The issue also includes essays from Michael Chabon, Ira Glass, John Updike, Chip Kidd, and others. Hardcover, clothbound, with an enormous dust jacket that does much more than guard against dust. This one makes our throats go tight.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dan Nadel - The Washington Post

Taken together, these three features are the book's thematic core, serving to remind us that the medium so vibrantly presented between stiff covers originally exists as ink on paper, requiring long nights of work and, in the cases of Schulz and Herriman, filling and surpassing a lifetime. McSweeney's 13, a humane and passionate gathering of the medium's contemporary best, also casts an exacting and unblinking eye on its past.

Publishers Weekly