Collecting the first four issues of Michael Kupperman’s bizarrely hilarious comic book, Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume One is rife with silliness and a twisted, free-spirited humour.

Here we find Albert Einstein and Mark Twain as undercover cops, Picasso chasing a hamburger down the street, sex holes and sex blimps, Jesus’s half-brother Pagus and porno colouring books. The madness, if you choose to call it that, doesn’t end there. A man whips Long John Silver in the face with a snake. Men dressed as bears steal homework. The lives of trashcan rats are pondered.

Confused? Understandably so. Presented in full colour and hardcover bound, the stories found within take pop culture and slap it silly.

The first three issues are separated into an adult section, a kid section and an old people section, with material that corresponds to the appropriate branch. Under the adult section are Mickey Rourke’s pubic hair stencils, and 4-Playo, the amazing foreplay robot. Superheroes dominate the children’s section, like Underpants on his Head Man and The Animalistic Professor. In the old people’s section, there are visits from Cousin Grandpa, Amoeba Car Grandpa, Crazy Catapult Grandpa, and so on. Each part is unrelenting in its strangeness.

Scattered throughout each issue are product advertisements, throwbacks to the 1950s and 1960s, drawn and presented in a convincing style, but featuring text and ideas that either make you laugh or scratch your head. How to get rid of Hair Monkeys, learn to play piano in your sleep, and buy rifles through the mail, act as absurd outlets for commercialization.

It’s this satire that carries the collection, and, without trying to sound profound, we end up seeing how ridiculous it can be to focus on such things.

Kupperman has worked with Robert Smigel (who writes the collection’s foreword) on TV Funhouse, and has also worked on projects for McSweeney’s. With this background in humour, it’s not as though Thrizzle has come out of thin air, but it continues to push the boundaries of the genre. The style is ever evolving, sending the characters, both new and already popular, to weird territories. Rather than making a single statement, the material expands through goofy commentary to heights of delirium. Amongst the confusion, it’s damn funny.