2011’s Best Comics and Graphic Novels

"In one of several surreal tales collected in I Will Bite You!, artist and writer Joseph Lambert pays homage to the dance scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas with a joyful spectrum of creatures boogalooing to a stoic turtle’s steady drumbeats. Beautifully hand-wrought typography and palpable emotions propel Lambert’s wildly imaginative scenarios into the turbulent slipstream that entwines our era’s pop culture and high art." – The Village Voice

LA Times Book Prize Finalist Spotlight: I Will Bite You! by Joseph Lambert

"He’s an exciting newcomer that almost surely has his best work ahead of him based on the promise he’s exhibited so far. And that’s no slight on the work in I Will Bite You! or any of his other current material. His sublime illustrations are unafraid to play with colors, form and the narrative convention of comics without losing any appeal and accessibility." – The Comics Observer

"Lambert has always had a clever way of incorporating lettering into his storytelling, wherein the letters themselves are not only decorative and informative, but are also part of the raw stuff of the narrative itself. In this story, the monsters literally twist the words of the children to turn screams of alarm into reassuring conversation, so as to prevent being discovered by a parent. One of the best things about the story is that the children beat the monsters by being even more disgusting than they are." – The Comics Journal

Joseph Lambert is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies. His comic “Turtle Keep it Steady!” was published in Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Comics 2008, for which he also designed the endpapers. His illustrations have appeared in Business Week, Popular Mechanics, 7Days, the Comics Journal and many other publications. I Will Bite You! and Other Stories, a Secret Acres collection, was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel, and won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Collection and Outstanding Artist. Lambert’s Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller (Hyperion), was the winner of the 2013 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.