Close To Home Uncut

Only in the world of Close to Home can you find hospitals staffed with hypochondriac-sniffing dogs, Yellowstone employees who secretly spike Old Faithful with gallons of Mr. Bubble, and telephones equipped with Caller I.Q. Of course, for the creator of the screamingly successful Close to Home, it's just another no-holds-barred day at the drawing board. Specializing in humor in everyday situations, John McPherson lampoons the worlds of parenting, marriage, school, health care, work, and leisure in ways that get readers to laugh at themselves.

Ferociously Close to Home delivers McPherson's trademark take on the absurdities of everyday life. To say that his solutions to these perplexing situations is "out there" is an understatement. Consider Gina, who decides a branding iron will be the ideal memory aid for her birthday date-challenged husband. And poor Lanny, whose treadmill session is interrupted when he inadvertently triggers the health club's offensive odor alarm. McPherson has long walked the line between grotesque and goofy. But somehow, his figures with big noses and bulging eyes connect with readers with a surefire magnetic precision. Whether it's health care or parenting, dating or car repairs, Close to Home delivers McPherson's warped world without fail.

Start with an everyday occurrence, add several helpings of absurdity, a few cups of silliness, and a dash of sickness and you get Close to Home. The goofy people and brilliant humor of this single-panel strip have put smiles on the faces of readers. This kooky collection, Close to Home Exposed, captures the hilarity of some of its best cartoon panels. As the comic's name suggests, Close to Home provides humor that's comfortable and familiar; yet the strip also has a palpable element of danger or nonsense. Topics vary widely, from health care and parenting to car repairs and shopping. But whether it's addressing dating or death--or just as likely, dating and death--Close to Home always delivers the off-center laughs its readers have come to expect. "Close to Home is always a scream, and I love the goofy people that you draw. Truth is, I work with a lot of these folks." --Tom D. "Where do you come up with these comics'! They are totally stupendous and are a big part of my stupid and nauseating life. You're the best!" --Sleepless in New York "Every day you make me laugh!! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!" --An Online Fan

Is your face suffering from a lack of exercise? Readers rely on John McPherson's Close to Home cartoon to contort their facial muscles into an unstoppable grin each day. Not even Botox can stop you from smiling at this latest collection of Close to Home. How do you measure a cartoon's popularity? The true measure of a comic panel's popularity is how often it is posted on a refrigerator, cubicle, break room bulletin board, or office door. By that standard, Close to Home wins the comic panel popularity contest hands down. Close to Home captures the humor in all facets of life. From home to hospitals, from classrooms to courtrooms, from boardrooms to backyards--there's a Close to Home panel that hits us where we live and work and play. A Million Little Pieces of Close to Home features hilarious panels first published in newspapers in the year 2000, the year of the Y2K scare that never materialized. Of course, that's just the kind of thing you'd expect from a Close to Home world.

Where there is stress, there is humor." --John McPherson * Close to Home, syndicated by Universal uClick, lampoons the best of popular culture one controversy at a time. Everything I Need to Know I Learned on Jerry Springer: A Close to Home Collection is a Close to Home collection. Creator John McPherson's sardonic wit creates an innocent hullabaloo with the Center for Nursing Advocacy and earns the accolades of Leavenworth Federal Detention Center's inmate #19108045. * McPherson's mastery is elevating the mundane to the magnificent. Scenes of societal sloth, coworker conundrums, dysfunctional discord, and medical malpractice become achingly funny when sketched by his pen.

Some call it weird. Others, eclectic, creative, hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny, and good old-fashioned snort-milk-out-your-nose humor. Whatever adjective you apply to Close to Home, it has become one of the most popular comic panels in the funny pages today. Close to Home has devout fans that range from elementary students to octogenarians. As one fan put it, "I feel like you have been looking in my window and are drawing my life!" Though by no means a Peeping Tom, John McPherson does have the unique skill of being able to take those idiosyncrasies of daily life that drive us all nuts and infuse them with razor-sharp wit. In When Bad Things Happen to Stupid People John features angry letters from readers, cartoons that were killed by the editor, a glimpse inside his creative process, and never-before-seen photos of his erasers, quill pens, and his lucky drawing slippers. Who could resist it?

A collection of single panel comics poking fun at the aging process, from a syndicated American cartoonist. “Where there is stress, or receding hairlines and liver spots, there is humor.” —John McPherson Be it the ritual hazing of new residents at Spring Meadow Retirement Center that requires retirees to drink twenty-five shots of prune juice, or the oxymoronic humor involved in the publication of the “1st Annual Swimsuit Edition of Aging Today,” this collection of John McPherson’s cartoons finds humor in life’s most everyday act—namely, aging. Octogenarians, centenarians—even those younger and in between—all agree, John McPherson is a comic master when it comes to creating humor out of getting older. Culling more than 100 aging-specific black-and-white and full-color panels from McPherson's Close to Home cartoon panel and featuring a zany cast of malpracticing medics, denture-less dentists, and cynical civil servants, this humorous compendium is the ultimate ode to being over the hill.

No one walks away from a Close to Home cartoon unscathed. John McPherson's lumpy characters and bizarre situations are tailor-made for gut-splitting laughs. And then there are the cartoons that leave readers shaking their heads, sputtering, "Oh my gosh" as a guilty smile passes across their faces. The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats delivers what fans expect from McPherson: jokes about everything from parenting to dating to car repairs. McPherson takes his readers on a journey that's very Close to Home.