All good things, as they say — and while Noah Van Sciver’s annual (or thereabouts) Fantagraphics-published Fante Bukowski series has been a very good thing indeed, by and large (we’ll get to its “big flaw” in due course), it’s usually a safe bet to wrap up a project before any kind of creative staleness sets in. To that end, then, when I heard that A Perfect Failure : Fante Bukowski Three would mark the final chapter of what what was now officially a trilogy, it sounded to me like the right thing to do — but now that the book has arrived (or, whoops, will arrive soon, this is an advance review, after all), has Van Sciver indeed checked out at the correct time?

Okay, fair enough, Noah himself isn’t “checking out” of cartooning (in point of fact, 2018 has been as busy a year as ever for him…