If you lived in Seattle eight or nine years ago, chances are you've seen Brian Sendelbach's comics. Back then, I considered his cartoons—produced under the pseudonym Smell of Steve—to be the delicious dessert tucked into the back of every new issue of The Stranger. Sendelbach's cartoons in Planet of Beer (many of which appeared in The Stranger) are hard to explain individually, e.g.: President Carter and his alien friend Kenny disintegrate a streaking Henry Kissinger, or a sad and scared bigfoot is sentenced to a season in hell but cheers up when he learns that season is winter ("Ha Ha! Take that, devil!!"). All of the characters, with their giant, gaping mouths sparsely lined with round teeth, could either be in the middle of a belly laugh or a bellow of pain.

Smell of Steve takes the empty concepts of American popular culture and flogs them until they break. You could easily imagine some coke-addled Hollywood producer taking Black Aquaman (he's Aquaman, but he's black!) completely seriously.

As the strip went on, things got even less rational; for some reason, Sendelbach decided to draw everyone swathed in bandages, as though they were burn victims. Characters are randomly attacked by shadow demons and rats. Now that all these strips have been collected into one ridiculously floppy, oversize book, it's clear what happened: Sendelbach was chafing at the entertainer role he'd settled into. Though he'd always been a satirist, he eventually fell victim to the same formulas he'd mocked. The only solution was to bring about Old Testament–style punishments for his creations: Planet of Beer ends with floods, lakes of fire, and eternal suffering. It's probably the best punch line he could've produced: That's entertainment. recommended