What Am I Doing Here?

By: Abner Dean

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Synopsis: What Am I Doing Here? is a startling masterwork by one of the forgotten innovators of American comics.In 1945, after more than a decade as a commercial illustrator—drawing advertisements and cartoons for Life, Time, Esquire, Newsweek, and many other publications—Abner Dean invented a genre all his own: One might call it the Existential Gag Cartoon. He used the elegant draftsmanship and single-panel format of the standard cartoons of the day, but turned them to a deeper, stranger purpose. With an inimitable mixture of wit, earnestness, and enigmatic surrealism, Dean uses this most ephemeral of forms to explore the deepest mysteries of human existence.What Am I Doing Here?, Dean&’s second book and perhaps his best, depicts a world at once alien and familiar, in which everyone is naked but acts like they&’re clothed—a world of club-wielding commuters and byzantine inventions, secret fears and perverse satisfactions. Through it all strolls (or crawls, or floats, or stumbles) Dean&’s unclad Everyman, searching for love, happiness, and the answers to life&’s biggest questions.This NYRC edition is a jacketed hardcover with extra-thick paper, and features brand-new, restored scans of the original artwork throughout.