Me a mound

It's the Mounds versus the Vegans in their inaugural published battle, and the heat is on. This first monograph and storybook from a major young African-American artist describes an ancient conflict: the peaceful, organic Mounds may have been created by the same father, Homerbuctas, who made their violent, nightmarish enemies the Vegans, but the two clans have been caught up in a tragi-comic struggle through nearly a decade's installations, paintings, drawings and etchings. Me a Mound combines biblical allusions, gags, food, and sex as it describes their saga in Hancock's laconic Texan prose and lays it out in his explosively colorful paintings. It's filled with new work created just for the book and a comprehensive overview of Hancock's oeuvre, on top of the entire Mounds versus Vegans saga to date, plus trading cards and inserts. Once readers have ventured through the die-cut cover into Hancock's universe--whether they are followers of contemporary art who recognize his name from two successive recent Whitney Biennials, fans of graphic novels, or general-interest browsers drawn in by the book's bright, cartoonish look--they will find it hard to see the world in quite the same way again.

Meat the artist, a big hello from Trenton Doyle Hancock -- The birth of the mounds, an introduction to our furry, troubled protagonists -- The Birth of the vegans, an introduction to our boney impish antagonists -- The life and death of #1: part one, watch in horror as vegan terrorists carry out their plot to destroy the oldest living mound -- It came from the studio floor, find out what torpedoboy was up to when he should've been tending to urgent mound business -- The life and death of #1: part two, the vegans succeed in their morbid mission of mayhem -- Bye and Bye, animals from far and wide come to grieve and pay their respects to mound # 1: the legend -- Appendix 1: The tofu converters, what do vegans do with the stolen mound meat? -- Appendix 2: St. Sesom and the cult of color, once upon a time, there were actually a few good vegans who befriended mounds and made a concerted effort to regain their humanity.