Dickie #4

Pieter De Poortere's darkly absurdist humor is on full display in this 2010 Glénat volume, collecting more of his subversive Belgian comic strip work. The cover sets the satirical tone immediately: a cartoonishly rendered barber in a white apron carefully styles the hair of a tiny, round-headed child dressed in a Nazi uniform, while a stern adult figure in matching regalia looks on — rendered in De Poortere's deceptively simple, deadpan ligne claire style. It's an unsettling yet deliberately ridiculous image that signals exactly the kind of pitch-black comedy readers can expect from this series.