Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters. A Wondermark collection. David Malki !. Dark Horse Books. (2010)

This is a collection of strips from the very funny and inventive Wondermark web comic. The Wondermark strips are usually collages of Victorian and Edwardian images, prints and photographs, with dialogue inserted. What could easily become stale or repetitive is kept fresh and funny by David Malki's sharp and absurd sense of humour. The strip reproduced on the back of the volume where a bear and a man in an old fashioned diving suit have an altercation is a prime example. The straight faced set up and execution allows the biting humour to shine through and the sheer cleverness of the the item is a major bonus. The rest of the strips in the collection maintain this high standard. David Malki updates the strip twice a week and maintains an impressively consistent level of inventiveness and wit.
One of the abundant pleasure of this book is the way that David Malki has taken advantage of the fact that it is a physical book. It is considerably more than a straight collection of the strips, they are presented in a superbly designed format that is packed with additional content. The tone of the extras, there are adverts, extra text items which pick up on and expand on some of the strips, and a stunning item that runs on the foot of each page, the book needs to be turned upside down to read it, is cleverly consistent with the images.
The book has the same grasp of the myriad possibilities of a physical item designed to be read as the web comic does for an item intended to be read on a screen. This thoughtfulness about the format and how the reader will interact with it is wonderful. David Malki's generous vision of the work in each medium, backed up by his razor sharp design skills and extraordinary creativity make this collection and the web versions outstanding pieces of work. A brilliant comic in a beautiful book.

Wondermark. Volume 1. Beards of our Forefathers. David Malki. Dark Horse Books (2008)

This is a collection of strips, with many extras, of the great webcomic. Any comic is a balance between the writing and the art, usually one is more obvious than the other without unbalancing the comic. With Wondermark, the burden rest very heavily on the writing as the art is composed of photoshoped collages of Victorian and Edwardian illustrations. The images are cunningly selected and the way they are arranged is a significant part of the strength of the strip, it is the words that allow it to take flight. David Malki consistently creates absurd and weirdly logical situations in a brief space that are more than simple set up and pay off jokes. The use of language is sinuous and careful, it adds as much to the texture of the strip as the dislocated images do. The consistent variety is remarkable, there is a astonishing range of invention, from the really simple to to truly joyously surreal.

The book itself is superbly designed by David Malki and Keith Wood to really take unexpected advantage of being a printed item. The colours of the pages, the odd stains on them as well as the lovely framing of the strips are a pleasure. At the website if a reader mouses over the strip there is an additional joke revealed, these are printed as footers to the strip in the book and along with the individual strip titles give a full sense of the density of the work that is being done by the author. The book has a considerable amount of additional matter which are very welcome and enjoyable.

This volume provides a strong answer to the question , why buy a collection of a strip you can read for free? David Malki has proved that the different ways of presenting the strip offer very different opportunities to a creator and that publishing a hard copy is more than simply producing a static collection of existing material. This book is very, very funny, creative and just brilliantly produced, a treasure.