Chocolate Cheeks

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.