In the box of comics waiting for review in the Dogsbody slush pile, there are works by countless cartoonists who pile on scratchy lines and hatching to cover up amateurish art or uninspired page composition. Then there's Matthew Thurber, who fills his work with scratchy lines because he likes to draw scratchy lines. I love looking at every single bit of Mining the Moon, even though it's kind of a mess.

Thurber draws panels that you'd think would look compositionally grating. There's one where a guy with an ugly beard is holding a glass of wine and standing next to a mummy while a spider crawls towards him. It's a cramped, hard-to-decipher drawing, but it's visually perfect and thrilling. I want to say it's perfect because Thurber is having fun drawing it, but that only gets at half of the gestalt of the thing.

Here's the other part: Mining the Moon is a beatifully drawn comic because Thurber is working in something of a "zone" right now (or at least he was during the completion of this comic). Everything clicks, even when it shouldn't... crowded panels look nice even when they should just look crowded.

What does a "zone" mean though? For Thurber's work, it means that everything he does looks incredibly human. Mining the Moon is drawn by a human hand. A lot of comics look like they were drawn by an index finger, limply holding a thin, boring, ugly, stupid number two pencil. Thurber's comics were drawn by a robust shoulder, connected to a sexy arm, as well as a cool wrist and a funky hand clutching an overused, ink-stained rapidograph.

Thurber's writing is pretty funny too, but I can't love it the way I love his drawing. It's gag stuff, but gag stuff filtered through a surreal/mean/ironic sensibility. There are gems, to be sure: two floating heads talk about margaritas, and then vanish. A spying donkey starts to cry and says "I could watch them all day." Good, funny, etc. No complaints on that one. But, for a lot of mining the moon, i tried to imagine the drawings without words. There was a little more... how-do-you-say... poetry... that way. Thurber is a funny guy, but i want his drawings to breathe. his writing is good, but his drawing is fine-awht! I want his drawings to shine while he's still in this great zone. Okay, scratch that. let's not junk anything. Thurber will stay in this zone for a long time, gags or no gags, okay?

(No price, no address. Go to www.ambiguousmass.org.)

Clayton Noone and Stefan Neville also like to draw scratchy lines. They're in the Thurber camp... they're hatching it up because it's fun to cross-hatch, and not because they're hiding bad, lazy art.

But Pipis doesn't have the inspired compositions that Mining has. The pages are full of interestingly labored-over drawings. They're not aesthetically pleasing (to me, at least) but interesting nonetheless. The way that dogs are drawn here is really nice: scruffy and kind of beatnik cool. They make artistic choices that I don't agree with, but I can respect.

The drawings are respectable, bnut the page compositions are a mess. When they break the page into a triptych, it's nice and it "works." But there are countless splash-page-style moments with a small-panel inset. For this kind of rough, "ugly" (intentionally ugly, mind you) art, small-panel insets just look like mush to the reader's eye.

This book will be a treat for some, because Noone and Neville make their work with attention to grubby detail, but I wish they'd take a cue from the sublime work of Chris Cilla: Just because you're drawing grubby things doesn't mean you have to draw grubby. Cilla draws junk but draws it with the utmost care and strength. Noone and Neville draw junk in a junky style. It's interesting, but hard to love.

(Because this is from Auckland, it's a little pricey. $6 NZ to: PO BOX 68518 Newton, Auckland, NZ. But y'know what? Please e-mail them to get the pricing details straight: stubbiesetc@yahoo.com.au or clayton@rootdonlouieforcash.co.nz.)

Austin English is a writer living in New York City.