Johnny Ryan's transgressive masterpiece Prison Pit has been the talk of alt-comicscircles for the past year since its debut in the summer of 2009. But beforePrison Pit, Ryan garnered a considerable following via his one-man humoranthology (which doubled as a one-man War Against Political Correctness)Angry Youth Comix. Take a Joke collects many of the best stories from this inimitableseries as well as many strips created for the wildly-popular Vice magazine,to which Ryan has contributed for years.

Unlike Ryan's previous collections, which focused on very short stories, Takea Joke spotlights several of the artist's longest humor pieces to date, notably:“Graveyard Goofs,” in which Ryan's hapless antiheroes Sinus O'Gynus andLoady McGee exhume the corpse of the recently-deceased Santa Claus as partof a Top Secret experiment, fantasize an orgy with a collection of anthropomorphiccondiment bottles (resulting in an unwanted pregnancy), and end up inHell; “Boobs Pooter's Jokepocalypse,” starring a coprophiliac version of Godzillawho destroys the world with hilarious jokes and crazy pranks; and “The World'sFunniest Joke,” a 24-page masterpiece that makes The Aristocrats look like a NoraEphron film.

All this plus Cheeseburger Chase, Omletta DuPont, and “The Day The NewYorker Came to Town”!