Selected images from the book Beasts! Vol. 2 (Fantagraphics, $34.99) remain on view. The 90 illustrations in the second Beasts! volume, like the first, were assigned and described in advance by editor-cryptozoologist Jacob Covey. From his alternative taxonomy springs all manner of scales and wings, purple fur and extra eyes, bloody fangs and random limbs. Every creation in this faux menagerie is rendered in a different style—line art, ink wash, computer-aided, painterly—with results that could be suited to coffee mugs, at one of the spectrum, to fine-art framing. Leafing through the color panels is like reading a children’s storybook devoid of children; only the monsters are left. From the local contributors, Bagge’s fuschia-colored, disembodied Chonchonyi head flies by flapping its ears; and Woodring’s squiddish, seagoing Scolopendra resembles a drowning centipede. I’m not sure that a fairy tale could be written to make them less disturbing. But perhaps that’s the point. BRIAN MILLER

Dec. 13-Feb. 4, 11:30 a.m., 2008