MUTTS is, to put it simply, the best comic strip produced in North America today." -The Infodad Page's five-star review

Giant events, earth-shaking themes, complex issues...all of these can make for captivating cartoons. But it's the artist who can take the simple, keep it simple, and still tell a story that really stands apart from the crowd. Patrick McDonnell, creator of MUTT's Mooch the cat and Earl the dog, is such a cartoonist.

The quickest way to absorb McDonnell's mastery of his art is to pick up this third MUTTS treasury, in which frame after frame and strip after strip he consistently displays his wit, cleverness, and ability with a pen. Mutts is the perfect way to escape into what appears to be an easygoing, carefree world. But just beneath the characters' banter and endearing mannerisms are the universal concerns of animals and people alike. The cartoonist's sparing style and gentle humor invites readers to fill out the frames with their own imaginations.

Nationally, McDonnell has received awards ranging from Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year to Newspaper Comic Strip of the Year. He has also received such worldwide praise as being named the Swedish Academy of Comic Art's Best International Comic Strip Artist. This strip's a winner the world around!

Syndicated by United Feature Syndicate, Get Fuzzy appears in 250 newspapers, from the Los Angeles Times to the Detroit Free Press to the Philadelphia Enquirer. Darby Conley's first book, This Dog Is Not a Toy, sold more than 115,000 copies; his second book, Fuzzy Logic, more than 85,000.When he was a child, Darby Conley used to wonder what his beloved pooch was thinking. That curiosity led to his creation of the hilarious strip Get Fuzzy in 1999, which has rapidly become one of the most popular cartoons in newspaper syndication. Showcasing the relationship between Bucky, a temperamental cat with an attitude; the sweet and sensitive dog Satchel; and their mild-mannered human companion, Rob Wilco, Get Fuzzy has cornered the market on anthropomorphic antics.

Anyone who finds animals both amazing and amusing will find this new Get Fuzzy collection one of the most bitingly funny books ever printed.

The Los Angeles Times calls Zits "one of the freshest and most imaginative comic strips." The world of sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan revolves around his insatiable "growing boy" appetite, lip-locking with squeeze Sarah, keeping his jerry-rigged vehicle roadworthy, and playing with his band, Goat Cheese Pizza. Somewhere in the background, he's vaguely aware of some muted voices, constantly beseeching him to pick up his Matterhorn-sized clothes pile, to be home on time (so lame!), and to (God forbid!) communicate with them. The disembodied voices are those of Connie and Walt, his mostly patient, but sometimes frustrated to exploding, parents. In Zits, they portray a hilarious view of coping with a teenager and with being a teenager. Created in 1997 by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and Reuben Award-winning cartoonist/writer Jerry Scott, Zits appears in more than 1,600 newspapers worldwide in 45 countries and is translated into 15 different languages. The comic has an estimated daily readership of more than 200 million readers.

No one walks away from a Close to Home cartoon unscathed. John McPherson's lumpy characters and bizarre situations are tailor-made for gut-splitting laughs. And then there are the cartoons that leave readers shaking their heads, sputtering, "Oh my gosh" as a guilty smile passes across their faces. The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats delivers what fans expect from McPherson: jokes about everything from parenting to dating to car repairs. McPherson takes his readers on a journey that's very Close to Home.