I need to brag about my friend Ben for a minute. He has a deal with SLG Publishing* to publish a book of illustrated Georgia folktales. Check them out: The Legend of the Coon Monkey, The Georgia Peach, and Thunderstruck. The characters are lively and expressive, dialogue is easy and natural, and the stories are excellently paced. Ben's got great comic timing, if there can be such a thing in a printed medium. And he gets at the essence of each tale, whether it's humor, or horror, or mystery. My clumsy review is not doing his art justice, so just go and look at it already.

* SLG=Slave Labor Graphics, producers of one of the funniest comics I've ever seen, Evan Dorkin's classic comic Milk and Cheese ("Dairy Products Gone Bad"). It's a one-trick pony (Milk and Cheese get drunk, wreak havoc) but man, is it funny.