What Am I Doing Here?

What Am I Doing Here? is a startling masterwork by one of the forgotten innovators of American comics. In 1945, after more than a decade as a commercial illustrator—drawing advertisements and cartoons for Life , Time , Esquire , Newsweek , and many other publications—Abner Dean invented a genre all his own: One might call it the Existential Gag Cartoon. He used the elegant draftsmanship and single-panel format of the standard cartoons of the day, but turned them to a deeper, stranger purpose. Wi