They're playing our 'toon

Periodicals: The 13th issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern arrives and, boy, is it laden down with goodies. Its dust-jacket is fabulous, a fold-out poster featuring cartoons, horoscopes and embossed with gold pattern.

It reads: "Free with this paper: A free 265 Page Hardcover featuring Stories by Many of North America's More Obscure Cartoonists About Sex, Death, Suicide - and more!" Open it out and mini-comic books fall from it. You're not opening a book, you're unwrapping a gift.

McSweeney's has become adept at speaking in the voice of mid-20th-century pulp fiction, but it once again captures the moment. The quarterly was brought into the world by Dave Eggers but adopted by leading new writers and this edition once again sees it at its audacious best. It is a trove of illustrations, graphic fiction and essays about the great cartoonists, so that the reader can't be sure what to expect on the next page, or that they haven't missed some wonderful detail on the previous one.

Editor Chris Ware has brought established artists such as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch and Art Spiegelman alongside several younger talents. He includes such oddities as the early drawings of John Updike, who left behind a career in what Ware calls this "bastard art-form". Generally, this is not a happy bunch. There is a dark thread running through the works, of love crushing the heart and life crushing dreams. The angst, self-loathing and sexual ineptitude of the lonely cartoonist are predominant themes.

In a formal but affecting way Richard McGuire's untitled panels dwell on man's attempts to bring some order to his surroundings. Meanwhile, Ware's own contribution is a bleak glance into a woman's broken love affair. Spiegelman supplies a previously published but typically self-immolating portrayal of his response to the Twin Towers attack, while Joe Sacco's comic journalism examines his encounter with an embittered Bosnian 10 years after the war. The essays are strong too, most notably that on Charles Schultz, explaining the often overlooked draughtsmanship behind Peanuts.

Not that everything works. Some good ideas don't quite fulfil their promise, weak notions are stretched thin, strips outstay their welcome. But as a complete journal this is a cracker, showcasing the richness of the comic genre in a most original package. Those who already love the medium will be reminded why. Those coming to it for the first time will wonder why they didn't do so before.

As for those coming fresh to the journals, then The Best of McSweeney's, a compendium from back issues, is a decent starting point. It features work from Zadie Smith, Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace, although some of the fiction, such as that by Ann Cummins and Amanda Davis, represents McSweeney's early intention to feature less linear short stories. Highlights include a thoughtful adventure piece by Eggers and Foster Wallace's unsettling opening story. The non-fiction, such as Paul Collins's piece on a 19th-century astronomy hoax and Gary Greenberg's correspondence with the Unabomber, is often compelling.

Unfortunately, while an interesting collection, this anthology somewhat dilutes the focused imagination that make the individual quarterlies such a treat.

• Shane Hegarty is an Irish Times journalist