To characterize A Lead Pipe Cinch as familiar genre fare that takes a cue from the aesthetic of the Cartoon Network generation of drawing would not be unfair. However, to dismiss it as such would be to miss out on a competent and confident writer whose gifts as an illustrator far surpass those of most of the animation flunkies dabbling in comics today.

Cinch portends to be a hard-boiled detective story with noir tones. The ambiance is spot-on, but the story suffers a few missteps along its unremarkable path. Pfromm comes off the blocks with speed if not grace, showing the damsel in distress crying in the private dick's office on page one, the rummy stool pigeon on page two and the husband in hiding at the end of page three. The detective confronts the mark, physical conflict follows and, finally, a blackout. Up to this point Pfromm gets credit for coloring within the lines; he does not deviate from the formula. In fact, Pfromm follows the formula so well that when the character slips into obligatory unconscioussness, one fully expects that he will awake into a world where the trappings of the genre are twisted in the playful hands of a burgeoning master, or better yet, where the story has been gutted, the caracass cleansed of the overpowering stench of clichés, the hide stripped free to leave bare the meat and bones of a lean, powerful story. But instead there is a hospital room and police detectives with questions.

Rather than take advantage of the opportunity to flex some genre-bending muscle, Pfromm stumbles through the conclusion of Cinch. The principal players all converge on a downtown hotel room, and the story ends with all of them dead in a pool of their mingled blood. The reader never gets a feel for the characters beyond their roles as ciphers, and the impact of their death is nil, just as the impact of their lives was.

Squandered opportunities and dramatic miscues aside, there is plenty to crow about in Cinch. Pfromm's narration and dialogue is cool and breezy. Lines such as, "Eventually some juice head that Lyle bent an elbow with rolled over on him for the price of a drink," and, "I decided to play it like a creep and blindside him a little," reveal a writer's mind equipped with a finely tuned internal timing mechanism. There is no Sin City style heavy-handedness, and Pfromm shows incredible strength in denying himself the indulgence of hamming it up or stuffing the strip full of noir jargon. This is especially important when one considers that even the most refined strain of cheese, coupled with Pfromm's visual style, could yield disastrous effects.

It is that visual style that delivers the most punch in Clinch. At first glance Pfromm looks like he could be taking a break from a day job penciling Dexter's Lab comics, but a closer inspection yields so much more. Pfromm reaches back further into the history of cartooning to find the roots of his style, as there is a thankful lack of the stiffness and sterility that plagues animation's new school. For all its sweeping lines and sharp points, there is a grittiness to Pfromm's cartooning. His characters are loosely drawn, ready to slip gracefully out from beneath their skin at any given moment.

This effect is evident throughout much of the work in Brussels: Drawings and Sketches, but there is much more going on in this book than exercises in style. Publishing the sketchbooks of R. Crumb is one thing. The self-published sketchbook of a relatively unknown cartoonist in the form of a minicomics-sized pamphlet is entirely another -- an act of unadulterated hubris.

But it is not egotism if there is substance hidden beneath the veneer of self-importance. Pfromm seems hyper-aware of the trap he has set for himself by presenting what one anticipates at cursory glance to be a collection of drawing of pretty girls from a young man's European vacation. It goes more like this --

Here are some drawings of pretty girls in a cafe. Here is an unshaven Belgian man with love in his eyes. Here is my father hooked up to a respirator. Here are some more pretty girls.

Pfromm's lushly drawn sketches of beautiful people intermingle with images of his father in a hospital (and sometimes in obvious pain) rendered in the very same style for more than just jarring effect. Pfromm states in his introduction --

"So these drawings are full of people, some of whom I met and befriended and some I did not. One person in here I've known my whole life and like most of the rest I may not have the good fortune to see again. Be that as it may, they are here, highly stylized and looking nothing like the way they do when they move down the street, wait in line, get a parking ticket, kiss one another on the cheek, offer you a chair, tell you how screwed up America is, ask what it's like in New York, or just sit and drink coffee and smoke. I'm not sure that's the point anyway."

The point Pfromm's Brussels sketchbook makes is that the eye makes no distinction between a tragic image and a pleasant one. Moreover, the presentation of these images together is wholly representative of the experience they are based on. Even when occupied with the gravest of concerns, the mind will wander, the eye will rove. A wife will look away from her husband in the middle of an argument and allow herself two seconds to consider the design on a dishtowel. A groom at a wedding will survey the congregation to pick out the worst dressed person of the bunch. A son visiting his father in a foreign hospital will walk across the street for lunch and admire the waitress as she serves drinks. One single day is filled with hundreds of individual moments that seem entirely unrelated, yet come together in concert to define an experience.

In this case, the experience is George Pfromm's trip to Brussels, and the reader is privileged to share it with him.

The fifth issue of Frame tells the story of two unrelated incidents from the life of musician Thelonius Monk and gives a brief review of the work Monk did in his time at Prestige Records. Having not had the opportunity to read the first four issues of the series, reading issue five alone had the same feeling as walking into a party late. After reading the letters at the book's end in which English receives high praise from the likes of Jordan Crane, John Porcellino and Dan Clowes for issue four, issue five feels like walking into that same party just as all the pretty girls are leaving, carrying the empty keg above their heads.

That's not to say that issue five is a wash -- far from it. To continue the party analogy, there are still some people hanging out, and enough stray beers in the fridge to get wasted on. But I can only feel a hint of jealousy for having gotten this issue as opposed to the last when reading Clowes' letter admiring English for a bold experiment in the interplay of recorded music and comics (issue four apparently came with a soundtrack to listen to while reading).

Without having experienced the fourth issue, one can still tell that English is conducting some bold experiments in the visual representation of music in issue five. "The Plane" relates an event that took place in Monk's home in the presence of Bud Powell biographer Paul Paudras, in which Monk uses the piano to recreate the sound of a fighter plane. English tells the story through the voice of Paudras, whose words are paired with alternating jittery portraits of Monk, Paudras and the piano. The portraits are framed with jumbles of symbols that provoke an anxious reaction. There is an urgency in these drawings that the cartoonist uses to recreate the urgency and confusion Paudrus must have felt upon hearing the sound of an airplane come out of Monk's piano.

"The Card" tells the story of the time Monk was caught by the police with heroin that belonged to Powell. English gives us seven panels, each with a different face, each telling the story picking up where the last face left off. Here English intends a different approach -- rather than use cartooning to recreate a mood, he stays non-intrusive. The approach of the unidentified, nondescript faces allows the reader to focus on the story without making him or her stop to integrate that story into English's style. The extent to which this approach remains non-intrusive could be seen by some as representing a failure, as the author would get very much the same effect from having typed out the words on a typewriter. But even without duplicating the effect the complex visuals of the previous vignette, the pictures in "The Card" serve the more patient masters of pacing and tone. By breaking the story up into the easily digestible segments of the panels, English delivers an exceptionally brief story with a rhythm that makes it a more satisfying read. The faces themselves lend an air of historical documentary, similar to what Ho Che Anderson has done in King. These panels do less work than the drawings in "The Plane," but the work they do is no less vital.

The last segment, "The Prestige Recordings" includes what is by far the most intriguing art in the book. English's renditions of Monk playing with various other musicians are beautiful minimalist portraits. The problem is that the thread that binds them is weaker than those in "The Plane" or "The Card." English doesn't seem to have much to say about the records Monk produced during this period, and tersely tells the reader that Monk felt underappreciated by his label. The piece lacks the substance of the two preceding chapters, and seems concerned only with covering ground on the time line of Monk's life.

This concern with presenting the linear progression of Monk's career seems counterproductive to what English does best in this volume -- constructing an image of Monk out of various fragments of his life - unrelated fragments, some of which may seem unimportant or trivial outside of the context in which English puts them. If English wants to create a thorough study of the events of Monk's life in comics form, it would take at least 100 of these little books with the big drawings. But if the idea is to create a work of art inspired by Monk's life and reflective of his music, English should do so without worrying himself with the niceties of strict biography. There is more important work to be done.

The most maddening (and grotesquely intriguing) aspect of Zombie Commandos From Hell is not the never-ending gore, but rather the ticker-style advertisements that run across the bottom of the pages of the first issue. These text ads in extreme font urge readers to visit web sites that offer, "Brutal pagan death metal," or claim to be the "Headquarters of the Living Dead!"

The most shameless use of the ticker plug comes when the recently embattled King Veleveeda stops in to draw a random page. At the bottom -- "This page was brought to you at DB Velveeda from www.cheesygraphics.com!" Someone should sue him for that.

Printing advertisements and self-promoting plugs at the bottom of the page constitutes a violation of sacred space that comes from the same insidious corner of the brain that brought corporate logos onto the field at sporting events and car commercials to the movie theater. This would matter more if Zombie Commandos From Hell were interesting camp or well-executed horror. Instead it is badly drawn, badly written schlock that looks like it was created with the intention of spawning a video game. One is tempted to say that it is created by folks whose greatest reading experiences all involve pop-up text in video games. But considering the level of sophistication found in the video games of recent years, one can only assume that the authors of Zombie Commandos From Hell are functional illiterates of the same order as the President of the United States -- illiterates that share that man's insatiable bloodlust and underdeveloped sense of humor.