The Lowbrow Reader is likely the only zine ever that has dedicated half an issue to a 2007 interview with the late button-pushing comic legend Joan Rivers. It's also likely the only zine in which actor and writer Jesse Eisenberg has imagined the conversations bugs have about him. Or the only zine where Brian Abrams would consider including an outtake from his book You Talkin' to Me?: The Definitive Guide to Movie Quotes where he interviews genius disco-funk producer Nile Rodgers. 

For a comedy zine that advertises itself as a deep-dive into base humor, it's always so much more than that, and I like looking for the sublime moments within TLR's pages. In this issue, it's without a doubt editor Jay Ruttenberg's essay on Maurice Sendak, specifically his underappreciated 1963 picture-book collaboration with avant-garde film scholar Amos Vogel, How Little Lori Visited Times Square. Ruttenberg writes, "The picture books we read aloud, especially, can seem closer to song than to conventional literature. We revisit them again and again until they enter our souls."

Also included: a comic by Nathan Gelgud. Plus illustrations from: John Mathias, Jackie Gendel, Doreen Kirchner, Lucinda Schreiber, and Tamara Shopsin.

48 pages, half-letter size.