Other artists featured includes Linda Barry, Jaques Tardi, Sue Coe, Jerry Moriarty, Kim Deitch, Joost Swarte, Justin Green, Mark Beyer, art spiegelman, Henry Darger, R. Sikoryak, Ben Katchor, Marti, and Charles Burns
Cover copyright © Joost Swarte
The story told in this word-less short strip is rather simple -- that potato shaped guy wakes up without any eyes, gets some new eyes in the mail, puts them in, loses them, puts them back in again, sees himself in the mirror and tries to lose the eyes again. (The Ğlock yourself out of the houseğ theme that can be found in many of Ware's works also puts in an appearance.) Normal every day comics.
Humor and tragedy go hand in hand here, and the closing panel is rather chilling.
The usage of color is interesting -- while Ware later mostly uses strong, natural, flat, beautiful colors, this strip sees him using pastels. He also plays with screening -- one page is almost all in black and white with just a blue dot screen printed over it.
The strip is reprinted in The ACME Novelty Library No. 3 without color, and substantially reworked, redrawn and expanded. Or perhaps it's the other way around. If I'm to hazard a guess, I think this version of the story is a later reworking/distillation of the work printed on the center spread of ANL3, although they might both, indeed, be reworkings of a common source material.
