Late Bloomer

By

Hardcover, 2005

The biggest, richest and most delightful collection of Tyler's work to date. Tales of loss, difficult relatives and questionable relationships are infused with Tyler's rueful humor, pitiless wit and deep empathy.

Carol Tyler has been a professional (and highly acclaimed) cartoonist for over 20 years, appearing in such venues as Robert Crumb's Weirdo, Wimmen's Comix, and Drawn & Quarterly magazine.

But over the years her status as a working mother has drastically curtailed her ability to set aside time for her cartooning. Thus each rare new story from her pen has been greeted with hurrahsas well they should be, because she's one of the most skillful, caustic, and emphatic cartoon storytellers of her generation. This new book presents the biggest, richest and most delightful collection of Tyler's work to date featuring many new and previously unpublished works.

In "Migrant Mother" Tyler tells the grueling story of a cross-country trip with the flu and her terrible twos toddler using her trademark combination of rueful humor and emphathy. The full-color "Just A Bad Seed" is a meditation on a problem child who might not be such a problem after all, while "The Return of Mrs. Kite" chronicles a family crisishow her widowed grandmother fell in with a beau of questionable character. "Gone" (also in full color) is a stirring meditation on all kinds of loss, and "Why I'm A-gin' Southern Men" is a classic rant that dissects that particular breed of maleor at least a certain subspecies of "ex"eswith pitiless wit.

"Carol Tyler is a crucial voice for the medium. She's lived so many roles -- bohemian, artist, mother, teacher, Midwestern housewife, family historian -- and imbues her work with all the wisdom of her experience. Poetic, her work is ornamented with detail, yet not flowery. Carol is neither sensationalistic or sentimental, yet she documents all the clumsiness of human existence with incredible grace." — Craig Thompson - (Blankets, Habibi)

"This book is a revelation for me; I'd only seen a few examples of Carol Tyler's cartooning before, but the verdant richness and humanity of her whole body of work has raised her in my mind to one of the handful of true greats of the original 'underground' generation. Unpretentious and inviting, it recerates the comfortable, reassuring feeling of a favorite relative telling you stories at the kitchen table -- despite its painful subject matter and revealing details. Buy this book! It will inspire and move you." — Chris Ware - (Building Stories)

"Carol Tyler's work stands out for its thoughtfulness, energy and bite. She is a great storyteller with an ethereally expressive drawing style that enables her to convey emotion and personality with aching resonance, and she understands people with an acuity that is tender, wise and devastating." — Jim Woodring - (The Frank Book, Congress of the Animals)

"Poignant, understated family dramas." — Artforum

"She's a great artist." — R. Crumb