What Am I Doing Here?

<i>What Am I Doing Here?</i> is a startling masterwork by one of the forgotten innovators of American comics.<br><br>In 1945 after more than a decade as a commercial illustrator&#151;drawing advertisements and cartoons for <i>Life</i> <i>Time</i> <i>Esquire</i> <i>Newsweek</i> and many other publications&#151;Abner Dean invented a genre all his own: One might call it the Existential Gag Cartoon. He used the elegant draftsmanship and single-panel format of the standard cartoons of the day but turned them to a deeper stranger purpose. With an inimitable mixture of wit earnestness and enigmatic surrealism Dean uses this most ephemeral of forms to explore the deepest mysteries of human existence.<br><br><i>What Am I Doing Here?</i> Dean&#146;s second book and perhaps his best depicts a world at once alien and familiar in which everyone is naked but acts like they&#146;re clothed&#151;a world of club-wielding commuters and byzantine inventions secret fears and perverse satisfactions. Through it all strolls (or crawls or floats or stumbles) Dean&#146;s unclad Everyman searching for love happiness and the answers to life&#146;s biggest questions.<br><br>This NYRC edition is a jacketed hardcover with extra-thick paper and features brand-new restored scans of the original artwork throughout.