100% Evil

"There's evil in the world."—George W. Bush

And lots of it. The question is, just what does it look like? A politician? An ex-girlfriend? Your landlord? Your boss? Hanna Arendt said it was banal. The Red Sox think of the Yankees. And in this hilarious, disturbing, quirky, and brilliant little book, noted illustrators Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann present a catalog of their own misanthropic imaginings.

The two met in 1997, when Blechman was art director for the New York Times Op-ed Page and Niemann, now a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, had just started working in New York City. As their personal and professional friendship began, they found themselves spending countless nights together in Brooklyn bars, drawing up images—wry, comic, arch, painful—to represent the sex affairs and political scandals, acts of terror and acts of war that were the news.

This professional work led to a personal passion, and so the illustrators chose to draw a small series on rosier subjects like maps and love. But as the world around them grew darker, they decided to explore the other end of the emotional spectrum and devote themselves to evil. 100% Evil is the result: a thoughtful, comical, and—at times—joyful book that just goes to show that sometimes it's good to be bad.