Judging his talent by this newest bit of wan and cackling morbidity, Trondheim is certainly a standout, even amid his talented fellows in the vaguely defined nouvelle vague wave of French cartoonists (David B, Joann Sfar, etc.). Mister I is a barely rendered grade school doodle of a figure (sausage-shaped, stick limbs, pinhole eyes) who trips through one poorly reasoned page-long adventure after another, which all end up the same-with him dead. Each of Trondheim's pages is hacked up into 60 postage stamp-sized panels, which follow Mister I as he assays various doomed tasks, most of which involve playing pranks or stealing food (a pie cooling on a window sill is a recurring and deadly temptation). Somehow, even though the end of each story is known well in advance-Mister I dead in the bottom right-hand panel, a small splurt of blood haloing his head-the book doesn't become repetitious but engenders curiosity. As with Wile E. Coyote, the reader is not bored by knowing the conclusion, but is dragged in to see how Mister I manages to get himself dead this time, whether it's by starting a fight with the wrong guy or by trying to outsmart his inevitably cleverer opponents. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved