Dead Babies 2: A Series Of Short Life Stories (Signed Copy)

Dead Babies 2: A Series Of Short Life Stories... The Second Volume Of Brief Biographical Sketches

The subjects in this volume also had their moments. Meera's moment was brief and involved ice. Sam's moment involved heights and the general uncooperativeness of physics. Each person in these pages gets a page. Their story is complete. The book moves on, as the series does, with the cheerful efficiency of a nature documentary narrated by someone who has made peace with the full arc of existence and is prepared to document it without editorializing. Volume two. More subjects. Same outcome. Different details.

In the tradition of Edward Gorey's illustrated dark humor and every other artist who has taken the macabre and found the comedy inside it, this book continues a series that has apparently found its audience... which tells you something about the audience, and probably something about you for being on this page. It is not for children. It is for adults who have processed mortality enough to find the absurdist angle and find that angle more useful than pretending it isn't there. The artwork is cartoon. The subjects are not available for comment.

This Book IS For:

• Readers of volume one who needed to know what happened with the next set of subjects
• Fans of Gorey-adjacent dark illustrated humor who want something that commits harder to the premise
• Adults who process the uncomfortable truth of existence through comedy rather than through any of the more expensive alternatives
• Gift-givers who want to hand someone a book that causes a very specific and recognizable laugh... the one where the person also looks slightly alarmed at themselves

This Book Is NOT For:

• People who found the title of the first volume sufficient cause for complaint and are still composing that complaint
• Readers who need dark material to be redemptive, uplifting, or followed by a resources page
• Anyone who has had a very recent and very direct personal experience with the subject matter of this series
• Parents who give books to their actual children without reading the cover first and have learned nothing

Appropriate For:

• White elephant exchanges where being the most memorable gift is the goal and this achieves it
• Gifts for fans of dark comedy who claim they've read everything edgy... they haven't read this yet
• Anyone who loved volume one and wants the complete experience of the series
• Bachelorette parties for the friend who described her bachelorette party aesthetic as "dark carnival"

Why Buy This

Dark humor is one of the few universally ancient human traditions. Every culture across every century has told stories about death in a way that makes the telling bearable. This book is in that tradition, produced with cartoon art instead of cave paintings, and sold for roughly what a medium popcorn costs at a movie theater that will show you death with much more budget and considerably less honesty about what it's doing.

Volume two exists because volume one existed and people wanted more, which says everything that needs to be said about the audience for this work and their excellent judgment. Buy it individually. Buy it as part of a set. Give it to someone who will have the laugh that comes before the self-assessment and then decide the laugh was worth it. It always is. That's why there are multiple volumes.