Being a tattoo artist, it is not surprising that Adam Suerte can draw. What is surprising is that Suerte knows his way around a comics page the way your dad knows his way around the liquor store.

The most prominent trend in Aprendiz is the integration of elements typical to tattoo design into Suerte's compositions; Skulls, daggers and 40-ounce beer bottles are recurring images. The most impressive application of such imagery is the use of a flowing banner to display narrative captions. The banner serves dual purposes: Being a tattoo-related image, it strengthens the bond between art and subject. It also fills the more practical role of visual traffic controller. Banners overlap from panel to panel, directing the eye and creating a smooth visual flow. The result is a seamless page. The effect provides for as graceful a visual reading experience as one could ever want.

But Aprendiz is more than just easy on the eyes. Suerte is a writer with both hands on the wheel of his story, wasting no time in initiating the action. Book One is the first in a series of five installments documenting Suerte's time as an apprentice tattoo artist in New York. Over the first five pages Suerte recalls the chain of events that would put him in position to meet Jeff Ortega, a Manhattan tattoo artist who eventually offers him an apprenticeship in his studio. Background information in the first five pages that may have appeared extraneous at first is soon revealed to be essential to the story, as circumstances conspire to put Suerte in a position from which Ortega's offer appears both personally appealing and financially feasible. Just when life is looking up for Suerte, Ortega's business partner Myke is introduced, causing a shake up of the status quo that leaves Suerte in seeming dire straits at the conclusion of Book One.

Suerte displays a keen knowledge of narrative formula. Every character with more than one line plays a crucial role. In autobiographical comics, it is too tempting to include characters or events just because they were there or they happened. Suerte understands that story is the primary concern and that no one is particularly interested in strict documentation of the life of someone who does not know how to tell a story. The chain of events in Aprendiz lead to a final scene featuring the three principal characters in a conflict situation, and Suerte comes out the loser. His life is now worse than it was at the time of his first meeting with Jeff, the story's precipitating action. If Suerte is to serialize his story in multiple chapters, this is exactly the structure he should follow, each chapter ending with a giant question mark, a reason to come back for the next chapter.

There is a lot of pretentious talk in Aprendiz about what it means to be an artist. Fortunately, Suerte underscores this chorus with visuals that seem to indicate that the narrator understands that this is pretentious talk and that it now sounds a bit ridiculous. As the narrator tells the reader, "I was truly interested in embarking on a new artistic odyssey that wasn't part of my last creative venture," the cartoon Suerte sits and dreams of his life as a tattoo artist. A thought bubble floats to the side, in which a pretty girls moans, "Ay, papí," as Suerte, in beret and ruffled collar, tattoos her, saying, "And when I'm done with this, I'll paint you, my dear." A caption on the beret reads, "Renaissance Boy."

Suerte's awareness of the way in which his character is perceived by the reader and his willingness to poke fun at himself are both marks of an autobiographical cartoonist who understands the difference between autobiography as narrative and autobiography as self love. The best autobiographic cartoonists are those that are either able to achieve a level of honesty in their reflections on their own behavior that demonstrates true introspection rather than simple recollection, or those that are able to edit the events of their lives to fit the narrative framework of a piece of fiction. Suerte appears capable of both, which bodes well for future installments of Aprendiz.

Ted Steier is not a bad artist. His comics are less than spectacular, but there is an appealing, easy feel to his line, and he seems to have a grasp of visual storytelling that shows potential. One would also be able to find worse dialogue in any number of minicomics, and Steier's dialogue is good enough for his work to be considered promising in that aspect as well. His stories, however, are textbook juvenilia.

Steier is unable to climb out of the hole he has created for himself with his concept. The wacky adventures of Gremlin Kid and W.H. are simply not funny enough to exceed the low expectations that come with a barfly comedy. Steier does have his moments -- after tripping over a baby in the street, Gremlin Kid says, "What's a baby doing out in the street at 3:30 in the morning?" to which W.H. replies, "Playing the harmonica." But too often Steier's brand of humor too closely resembles that of a beer commercial; the mystery package around which issue three centers turns out to contain Pamela Anderson's breast implants.

Steier's major problem stems from an inability to lend a distinctive voice to either of his protagonists. Though one is a fuzzy gremlin and the other is a guy with big sideburns, Gremlin Kid and W.H. act exactly the same -- a little drunk. To read only the dialogue, it would be impossible to distinguish between the two. Almost all buddy comedies rely on the differences between the buddies to act as the spring from which the laughs must flow. The fact that Gremlin Kid and W.H. are indistinguishable limits the source material from which to wrestle those laughs that this book so badly needs to evoke.

All drunks act like drunks. If Steier wants to create a decent buddy comedy, he should sober Gremlin Kid and W.H. up for a little while, see what they are like when they can see straight and speak clearly. If not, he may want to move on to another genre, maybe parent-child brain-swapping comedies or horror movie spoofs, and start over.

Large cast humor comics are at their best when the author is able, through repetition, to endow each character with strong, readily apparent traits and clearly define the relationships between the characters. This establishes a set of rules by which the characters interact. Once the reader understands that Character A will always smack Character B in the face with the frying pan, the author has a solid foundation from which to build. There are a thousand different ways to get smacked in the face with a frying pan, just as there are a thousand different ways for a girl to pull a football out from in front of a boy at the last second, or a thousand ways for a cat to get hit in the head with a brick. Koob understands this. That is why Hamster Man will always be mean to The Monkey and why U-Head will always treat Hamster Man with sarcasm and contempt. The more it happens, the more ways Koob has to think of to make it happen and the funnier it gets.

Koob also understands the reader's perception of Hamster Man, and uses that awareness to his advantage. One of the funniest moments in issue 12 comes when the new character Toothy is introduced in "The Tooth Doctor." In long-running large cast comedies that see few cast changes over their life-span, it is a given that the reader will view the introduction of a new character as a momentous occasion -- in the case of Beetle Bailey it calls for press releases -- so when a tooth pulled from E-Head's mouth quadruples in size and grows eyeballs, it is only natural that a chorus of voices should chime in with, "It's Toothy!" Toothy then announces that he's leaving for France, and the focus of the strip shifts to E-Head's search for a new tooth. The promise of Toothy is left unfulfilled, exactly as it should be.

Hamster Man shows marked improvement in 2000's issue ten from 1995's issue nine. The early '90s issues put the development of Koob's dialogue style on display, and it is interesting to see the small improvements from issue to issue. But with number ten it is as if Koob is trying on a suit that was too big for him five years ago, but fits perfectly now. With any luck, he won't ever go another five years without putting it on again.

At first it seems like such a good idea -- "Childhood comics and drawings by all your favorite alternative comics superstars!" Who wouldn't want to take a peek at the work of a very young Ivan Brunetti, Megan Kelso or James Kochalka (besides anyone that has never seen the inside of the Bethesda, Ma. Holiday Inn, anyway)? For those who read The Comics Journal for the articles, there are even contributions from celebrity critics Jesse Fuchs and Tom Spurgeon. You know, Mom, I think this is going to be the best Low Jinx ever.

But like sex with someone more attractive than you, the anticipation is better than the reality. The reality is that Low Jinx #4 was drawn by kids, and kids are stupid. The comics in Kurt Wolfgang's newest anthology are no better or worse than the ones your niece or nephew have on display at the gallery that is your sister's refrigerator. There is nothing in them that gives any indication that their creator would one day be considered a reputable artist, with one noteworthy exception.

For those hoping to find the seeds of greatness in the pages of Low Jinx, look no further than the inside front cover. There you will find one of six strips by Sam Henderson. Three of the strips are dated 1984, and one can assume based on the level of artistry that the other three are also from that time. What sets Henderson's contribution apart is that in it one can see him playing with elements that would become staples in his later work. In one strip a character named Pert Herman gets hit in the head with a brick and his mouth falls to the ground in front of him. Another character then walks up and reattaches the mouth with a hammer and nail. The strip ends with Pert Herman skating off happily, a nail sticking out of the side of his mouth. Those familiar with Henderson's comics will recognize the motif of the removal and replacement of facial features. Another strip, this one featuring a character named Mr. Schloimie that looks like a classic Henderson dufus-type, shows his comedic voice to be already well formed. Mr. Schloimie gets bombarded by spitballs from a classroom full of children (among them Charlie Brown and Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy). Panicked, Mr. Schloimie yells out, "Stop! Help me, somebody!" A giant wad of spit then falls from above onto the children. Standing waist deep in a lake of saliva next to the floating corpse of Charlie Brown, Mr. Schloimie says, "Thank you, God!"

What is remarkable about these strips is not that they are better than the other strips in Low Jinks (although they are). It is that they are so similar to those that would one day bring Henderson to be considered one of the top humorists in alternative comics. Henderson's are the only strips to provide such insights into the development of the artist. From this one can assume that such a revelatory reading experience was not the artistic mission of Low Jinx. To judge the rest of the comics in Low Jinx by such standards may thus be unfair.

But what then is the purpose of this anthology? While it may be safe to assume that the bit from the cover about "your favorite alternative comics superstars" was written with tongue placed firmly in cheek, that phrase appears to lie near the heart of Low Jinx's mission. It serves to allow the reader the opportunity to think, "Isn't it weird to see an apocalyptic science-fiction story by Jordan Crane?" or, "Isn't it funny to see Greg Cook drawing Walter Payton as an action hero?" The book is the alternative comics equivalent of looking at the high-school yearbook photos of famous actors; it may be cute, but it is not going to enrich your life.

And so what if Low Jinx lacks high artistic merit? It is, after all, a pile of photocopies stapled together. The problem is that the Henderson strips show that with just a slight adjustment in approach, this book could have been so much more than it is. Low Jinx #4 is instead no more than a celebration of the cult of personality in an artistic community where publisher, artist, retailer and reader are all personalities. Congratulations, everybody.