Comics Savants: A Survey of Seattle Alternative Cartoonists is just that: A wall-size sampler of local talent to whet your interest in buying books, conveniently stacked nearby. Or you may be prompted to purchase individual one-off drawings from a dozen prominent local artists including Peter Bagge, Charles Burns, Ellen Forney, and Pat Moriarity. Most are small, inked black-and-white pages; none would really work poster-size. Theyre meant to be read, up close, as well as appreciated for their graphic art. Is there a uniquely Northwest school of cartoon art? It would be nearly interchangeable, I suppose, with the Fantagraphics roster (some of whose staff are represented here, too). And that school would be dark, cynical, ornery, a tad cantankerous. Perhaps not so different than cartoonists in other cities, but ours are more demographically concentrated, clustered like an ink blot on the map. BRIAN MILLER
Mondays-Sundays, 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Starts: Aug. 8. Continues through Sept. 9, 2009
