Joe Coleman is like a contemporary William Faulkner, finding the ghosts of America and reviving a sense of mystery and darkness in narrative storytelling. He just does it with paint, in gripping fashion. Fantagraphics’ new book, A Doorway to Joe: The Art of Joe Coleman, speaks of Joe’s subjects as “a compendium of the famous and the infamous, the dispossessed, the deviant, the damaged and the damned,” which only deepens the intrigue surrounding his unique authoring of a painting. With an introduction by Tom Waits, another storyteller of the nonconformist vision of Americana, this 450-page book is the ultimate paean to an outsider legend. —Evan Pricco
Fantagraphics, fantagraphics.com
