Appleguy and Beefwood - by Cedar Van Tassel (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A serial buddy comedy like no other from the mind of Cedar Van Tassel

Cartoonist Cedar Van Tassel has created the great new comic strip of the modern era: a perfect jewel in an underappreciated genre in the comics field--the serial buddy comedy. Using rural agriculture as a stepping-off point, he tackles climate change, small-town politics, psychedelics, mysticism, and friendship.

Appleguy & Beefwood's rapid-fire dialogue and tightly wound humour is reminiscent of classic buddy comics as wide-ranging as Calvin and Hobbes or Mutt and Jeff. Van Tassel's wiry, delightfully jagged characters walk and talk as the world grows both physically and spiritually around them.

This approachably hilarious take on the existential and esoteric distills the absurdities of the modern everyday into four panels with forthright wit and a discerning eye.

Review Quotes

"Van Tassel writes and draws like a prairie grass root system in the deep soil of weird America. Cosmic and funny and friendly and terrifying, like Cow Tools, or like a face in a tree trunk that blinks and says something. Katchor drives a Tuff-bilt. This book is killer, a triumph."--Kevin Huizenga

"I'll be danged if these aren't some of the best comics around right now... funny, literate, sensitive, weird, joyful... and Van Tassel has perfect cartoonist's timing. These things are great!"--John Porcellino

About the Author

Cedar Van Tassel was born in Saline County, Kansas in 1999. He started drawing Appleguy as a comic strip for the Marlboro College student newspaper, and started publishing it regularly as a weekly Instagram comic in 2022. His work has been published in comics anthologies like CRAM and Frankenstein Magazine. A lifelong plant and prairie lover, he does work on ecological restoration projects throughout the Great Plains. He lives in Gypsum, Kansas.