Welcome to the Dahl House
by Ken Dahl
"Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the new American Rome." The collected 1997-2007 comics of Ken Dahl in this graphic novel anthology! Includes such stories as airport security, the demeaning experience of being arrested, having to sell off his earthly possessions at a yard sale to pay the slumlord, the creative process of trying to write comics about "important" subjects, and much more. Additionally, we are treated to helpful guides to putting bananas in your cereal, peeing in the shower, and swinging at night. 2006 Ignatz Winner! 2007 Center for Cartoon Studies Resident!
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This is great great stuff. And it reminds me of my favourite cartoonist Joe Ollmann (wagpress.net) :D
This book is making the rounds with all the cool kids in town. Ok. They're not that cool, but they swear if they could just get their big break juggling fire or belly dancing or liberating food from dumpsters, they would totally plunk down the cash for this fellow and give another copy a well-deserved home.
I'm having to redefine existentialism after reading this biblical offering.
This book made my boobs bigger! and i learned something TOO!
This is AWESOME! Buy it or you will regret it for the rest of your life, I AM SERIOUS!
Dahl draws and writes with a whimsical chain-of-though style that is somehow simultaneously incredibly meticulous and charmingly fluid. The persona he describes in his books may be angsty, frustrated, and lonely, but in actuality, Dahl is a levelheaded comic creator who knows exactly what he wants and precisely how to achieve that.
The character Gordon Smalls is exceptional. His self effacing narrative is so brutally honest one becomes sympathetic to his reckless actions. Wether he is explaining the dynamics around peeing in the shower, swinging into the night sky, or being arrested, Dahl has this reader mesmerized with the depth of his persona. In a scene outside his ex girlfriend’s window, Gordon Smalls is confronted and in his reaction, he slumps into someone who clearly has lived a novel with this person. This is one among many great moments in Dahl’s work. It is Dahl’s honesty both in the text and the art that makes this book stay with me long past reluctantly turning the last page.
"Besides being a swell guy, Gabby Schulz (aka Ken Dahl) is one of the great unsung talents in American comics. If I could sing at all, I would sing his talent right now in some sort of terrifying streaming audio that would pop in suddenly while you were browsing some other tab and make you frantically click back here to shut it down. So we’re all glad I don’t sing, because it would just distract from me telling you to buy and read Ken’s comics. Welcome to the Dahl House collects various short pieces from hither and yon into one nice, tidy, and oh-so-reasonably priced package that amounts to a delightful, beautifully-drawn screed against American “civilization” in the Oughts."
"Wow. Never has agitprop been so laugh out loud funny. When not ranting through his own damn self, Dahl busts out Gordon Smalls, a sort of Buddy Bradley who went to seed. The two-part "How To Steal The Food You Deserve" / "How To Get Arrested" set of skillshares from Smalls had me laughing aloud on the bus, looking like a damn fool."
"If there's anything connecting the various short comics in an array of styles as generally presented in this small book -- the kind that feels like a gift from heaven in its ability to gather scattered, lost work -- it's the surprising amount of tenderness that comes through its pages ... This is a fine little book, and I'd love to read more."
"The collected 1997-2007 comics of Ken Dahl includes all of his minis, short stories, anthology works and unpublished work including such titles as Taken For a Ride, Gordon Smalls Goes to Jail, No! and Blind Fart! "