Chocolate Cheeks

Edition excerpt from Chocolate Cheeks (2010): Anything can happen on a hot, summer day… Hilarious, frightening, mysterious, adorable and utterly bleak, Chocolate Cheeks has arrived to disgust and delight comic-book readers of all ages. "Sweet" Chubby Cheeks and the Pullapart Boy (a twenty-first century Frankenstein's monster for kids) are driving each other crazy. Forced together by their dating parents, these two bitter enemies have alienated—or otherwise disposed of—most of their social circle, leaving them with plenty of quality-time for each other. They go camping, start a business, form a band, join a team, try to make some new friends and engage in a "holy war." Things go from worse to worst, though, when the two boys find a cat—or is it a bird?—one hot, summer day. Steven Weissman, modern master of light tragedy, is at his most horrible with Chocolate Cheeks, the next great "Yikes" book from Fantagraphics. Juxtaposing gag-driven, newspaper-fashioned strips with a sprawling, Western comic aesthetic, the book is just gross enough to delight the children.