Funny ha ha, funny serious

A lean year, by recent standards. The highlight has to be Live Briefs: A Political - Sketch Book, by Steve Bell and Simon Hoggart (Methuen, £9.99 in UK), a collaboration between the two main political commentators from the Guardian. There is a good balance between cartoons and text, and the book is exceptionally well designed, so you don't get the urge (too much) to rush ahead and just look at the cartoons, ignoring Simon Hoggart's words. The Northern Ireland chapter is very interesting Simon Hoggart writes from the perspective of someone who has lived and worked in Belfast. Steve Bell draws from the point of view of someone who hasn't. Highly recommended.

If it is possible to have a comics coffee table book then I guess Marvel Universe, by Peter Sanderson (Virgin Books, £35 in UK), is it. While it's pretty expensive, it does have full colour printing on every page and since the printing standards in a book are vastly superior to those in the original comics, you will be seeing Spiderman, The Hulk and all the rest of the gang like you've never seen them before. The text while not detailed enough, I would imagine, for the true aficionado is informative enough for comics dunderheads like myself who only worked out earlier this year that Stan Lee wrote the stories and didn't draw the pictures.

The bestselling cartoon books this Christmas all come from cartoonists who are retired or dead (or both). There is a lesson for me there. The 50th Giles Collection (Pedigree, £6.99 in UK), There'd Treasure Everywhere - the latest Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson (Warner, £8.99 in UK), and the final Far Side collection, Last Chapter and Worse, by Gary Larsen (Warner, £7.99 in UK) should be readily available.

The funniest of the lot outside the superstar range is The Nest of Matt 96, the Daily Telegraph's front page pocket cartoonist, who never seems to have an off day and would be the best £3.99), if you could spend this year. Brief explanatory notes are include to remind you of the news stories.

Of the lesser lights, the pick of the bunch would be No Peas for the Wicked, by Kipper Williams (Vista, £5.99 in UK), with cartoons and strips from a myriad of publications such as the New Statesman, Guardian, Spectator and Private Eye. Another contributor to Private Eye is Graeme Keyes, who works for the Evening Herald, and has published a collection himself called Eyeball Soup (£5.99), a mixture of social, scatalogical and political gags. There's more lavatorial humour in Dady, by Rupert Fawcett (Boxtree, £5.99 in UK), a series of strips about a father bringing up babies, and pretty funny stuff especially for those who are going through life with a nappy in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, which, I'm delighted to say, ain't me, mate.