YOU'RE ALL JUST JEALOUS OF MY JETPACK, perfect lightener for the po-faced

YOU'RE ALL JUST JEALOUS OF MY JETPACK: Cartoons
TOM GAULD
Drawn & Quarterly
$19.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says The New York Times Magazine cartoonist Tom Gauld follows up his widely praised graphic novel Goliath with You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, a collection of cartoons made for The Guardian. Over the past eight years, Gauld has produced a weekly cartoon for the Saturday Review section of Britain’s best-regarded newspaper. Only a handful of comics from this huge and hilarious body of work have ever been printed in North America—and these have been available exclusively within the pages of the prestigious Believer magazine.

You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack distills perfectly Gauld’s dark humor, impeccable timing, and distinctive style. Arrests by the fiction police and imaginary towns designed by Tom Waits intermingle hilariously with piercing observations about human behavior and whimsical imaginings of the future. Again and again, Gauld reaffirms his position as a first-rank cartoonist, creating work infused with a deep understanding of both literary and cartoon history.

My Review: Tom Gauld brought out this collection in 2013. He is a Serious Intellectual with an Impish Streak, as his 2015 photo attests:


Easy on the eyes, funny to the bone, smart and wry and a lot of fun and game-changingly talented. Gauld has made a solid name for himself by being truthful, unsparing, and wryly willing to play the game he ever-so-Englishly lampoons. Anyone on your gift-giving radar who is a book person, a comics person, or a smart person is very likely to enjoy this book. Most people don't buy themselves books like this, so clearly frivolous and unserious, which means it's perfect as a Yuletide surprise for your favorite po-faced intellectual, your unsmilingly Goth niece, or your own sweet self as a means of escaping the seasonal silliness and brummagem jollification with a fellow eyebrow-raising up-the-sleeve laughing smartypants.







Before Gauld, very little humor and even less comic ink was spilled in such a way about books as cultural objects and not items of celebrity or nonce-memes. If these images did not make you laugh out loud in real time, you should not bother with this book.

Also? Might be a good idea to unfriend me. Tom Gauld makes me guffaw so hard my abdomen cramps.