Your Belief System Is Shot: Cartoons and Stuff

Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Humor
Review: There's woman and man in front of a television. On the screen is a bearded fellow in a robe who's doing a dance of sorts. In the background of the television scene is a smoking crater. The man who is watching the scene on television remarks to the woman, "Oops! We bombed `em back to the Jazz Age!

An apprehensive Mr. Peanut stands before St. Peter at the gate of Heaven. St. Peter looks up from his registration book and asks Mr. Peanut, "Were you smooth or chunky?"

These cartoons typify P.S. Mueller's work: a mixing of culture, politics and word play that give his cartoons the qualities that any cartoonist would strive to possess. They generate the thoughtfulness to cause a smile or the zaniness to provoke an outburst of laughter, while at the same time hinting at a way of thinking and communicating that places substance over style, authenticity over facetiousness. Mueller isn't strident or overbearing in his mission. He sets the stage mostly with single frame drawings, adds a simple phrase, and lets the reader take the cartoon into a comfort zone of choice-- most often into the humor zone.

Mueller's new book, Your Belief System is Shot: Cartoons and Stuff, is his fourth. In this work of over 130 pages, he also includes a few offbeat and amusing vignettes written with the efficiency and depth of an experienced poet.

I recommend this book for anyone who has a coffee table at home, an uncluttered spot on the office desk at work, or an empty space on the Christmas gift list. It's a breath of fresh humor at a very affordable price.