"BugHouse From The Top: The Complete BugHouse" by Steve Lafler

Tenor saxophone maestro Jimmy Watts leads his talented band of bugs from the swing era into the uncharted maelstrom of Bebop. As he and his bandmates claw their way to the top of the jazz world, they must fight the temptation to be consumed by addiction to the substance known as "Bug Juice".

Lafler doesn't back away from the horrors of addiction in creating BugHouse, but the artist's real game is depicting the joy of music in the language of comics, with his signature fluid brushwork.

Steve claims he was conscripted to cartooning as a tot—the result of watching reruns of old Max Fleischer animations. The Fleischer cartoons had four-year-old Lafler literally falling into a lush illustrated world, peopled by buggy creatures rapping over swing jazz, dancing all the while.

Published by Cat Head Comics

6" x 9", 408 pages. $34
Full-color covers with b+w interior. Perfect-bound GN