In the spirit of fairness from the outset, Mat Brinkman’s recently-reissued Kap Trap is a fascinating, if curiously uneven, beast — but here’s the more significant part of the deal : as a historical artifact, it’s absolutely invaluable.

Nearly 30 years old now, this early-days effort from a future founding member of the legendary Forth Thunder collective shows a cartoonist in fairly full possession of all his artistic faculties right out of the gate, even if it’s a little more tentative in terms of its execution than later efforts such as Teratoid Heights or Multiforce.  The  line from the one to the others is fairly clear, however — and I defy you to find  another cartoonist who had this clear and singular a vision of what they were looking to accomplish at age 18. Or at least another one not named Tillie Walden, who likewise arrived on “the…