I Told You So by Shannon Wheeler

I can't claim any connection to the cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, despite the name similarity. Oh, he lives in Portland, as does my brother -- but I think that's as close as it gets. The Wheelers are a vast clan, with our fingers in all of the world's pies, and Shannon's branch is very distant from my own.

But, still, he is a Wheeler, and thus one of the best in the world at whatever he chooses to do, by the power of that exceptional name. In his case, first there was the hit comic Too Much Coffee Man (in several formats, for a long time, and not quite done even now). But he's also been working seriously on New Yorker-style single-panel cartoons for at least a decade now, with some success in that fine magazine.

And, since he's a guy who publishes the cartoons he makes -- a man wants to eat, and his audiences wants to laugh -- I've seen two books of those cartoons so far: I Thought You Would Be Funnier and I Don't Get It.

I don't actually know how many of those books there are, now -- I have a vague sense Wheeler has been putting out one a year, since since when or until when is less clear -- but I found and read another one last month: I Told You So, published in 2012.

This one is loosely organized by place -- San Francisco, New York, Portland, The Suburbs, The Internets, and Unexplored Places -- which are, more or less, where the respective cartoons take place. It's as good an organizing principle as any other, I suppose.

And it's full of single-panel cartoons, in the arch, somewhat artificial New Yorker style. (All art is artificial, of course -- that's what makes it art. So that is in no way a dig.) Wheeler has a classic cartoony style here, full of tones and soft edges, that primes the reader to look for this kind of humor. (Well, it does for me, at least.)

Again, he is a Wheeler, and therefore excellent at what he does. It's no surprise he was good at this kind of cartoon. If you like New Yorker-y cartoons, Wheeler has a number of these little books full of them, and so far I can recommend them all.