nEuROTIC
John Cuneo

Fantagraphics 2007

Web: http://www.fantagraphics.com

This is quite an astounding work, but let’s be clear, it is not for the weak or heart or the puritan of spirit. John Cuneo has an eye for the perverse, the bizarre and the erotic. For years it seems Cuneo has worked for Esquire (where he illustrates the sex column), Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Entertainment Weekly, and The Atlantic while at the same time generating a huge volume of work that has never been published…Until now.

These lewd, perverse, erotic, disgusting and many cases outrageously hilarious images are beautifully reproduced in this volume. Cuneo’s cartooning style is an exaggerated one, key aspects of a given subject are taken to an extreme so as to make a point. In many ways they could be considered caricatures but with a strong sexual content and a biting social commentary. Cuneo doesn’t use sex for its own sake, but uses strong sexual content to express an idea or concept that cannot be expressed in any other way. The use of taboo imagery hence increases the intensity of his message in a way that normal caricatures could not.

The quality of this book is immediately clear, it is a lasciviously superb 96-page full-color 6” x 8 5/8” hardcover which looks the part before you even open it.

The reproduction of each image is clear (perhaps too clear considering some of the content !) and the colors are scrumptious. This is a sketchbook just how it should be and Fantagraphics should be congratulated on their high production values.

This is really a marvelous volume and a must have for collectors of the erotic and perverse !