Two innovative new pieces of comic-book art were brought home to the GettingIt offices from the Comic-Con International in San Diego last month. First, there's Clint Flicker, Swingin' Cowpoke in Tijuana Bound, an odd little piece of ingenuity that consists of a tiny sleeve with a folded-up comic strip stuffed inside. It's all constructed of heavy-duty cardboard and tells the tale of Clint Flicker, a cowboy who, among other things, fucks his horse. Drawn by Ante Vukojevich, the man behind Chick Magnet, it's weird and nasty and will soon be relegated to the darkest corners of my bookshelf, from which it will be frequently exhumed for pornographic giggle-fests.

Second, we've got the ingeniously produced and beautiful Spore: A Star Guide to Extraterrestrial Worlds. This is the kind of book that makes you wonder why someone hasn't thought of it already: a triangular volume, with three segments opening in orthogonal dimensions and many pages unfolding fractally into yet more trinities of information. Beautifully illustrated, Spore tells the (still more fractal) post-apocalyptic story of a triangular, metallic "book," a relic of alien technology that holds visions for the future. Finally, in comic books -- as in life -- form can be function.