British cartoonist Paul Thomas's An Unreliable History of Tattoos is as eccentric as the art form-cum-lifestyle choice that it (rather flippantly) seeks to celebrate. Presented as something between a lovely hardcover art book and a graphic novel, Thomas's irreverent opus tells the heavily fictionalized story of tattoos from their supposed inception in the Garden of Eden to their equally false apotheosis as elaborate illustrations cheekily inked on the skin of various British royals. It's an absurd, silly, slightly profane trip that fuses highbrow and lowbrow humor with Monty Python-esque glee.
Thomas's art is both lovely and charmingly brash. Cartoonish figures appear inked onto the pages like tattoos themselves, surrounded by elaborate swirls of intentionally gaudy primary colors. Panels are packed with tiny details including frequent jokes on popular Brit-comedy punching bags such as David Beckham or the right-wing party UKIP. One need not be an Anglophile, however, to appreciate the appeal of panels showing naked, tattooed Vikings charging onto the shores of the British Isles, one Norseman asking, "Fancy a whodunit?" while a fleeing woman cries, "Uh-oh! Nordic noir."
Thomas notes at the beginning of his "history" that "the sheer ubiquity of tattoos has reduced their ability to shock." In some ways, he seems determined to reclaim that shock value with bawdy jokes about Queen Elizabeth's sex life and equally brazen illustrated close-ups of inked unmentionables. In other words, An Unreliable History of Tattoos is the kind of coffee-table book you get for a cool, tatted-up aunt. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books