The collection is unashamedly devoted to the Canadian cartoonist's most personal symbols and totems. We know this from the cover, where, beneath a theater marquee beaming the collection's title, a gathering of peculiar icons cavorts. Jackie O dishes with Margot Channing; David Bowie chats up Richard Wagner; Oscar Wilde sizes up Mozart; Edward Gorey and Barbie furiously ignore each other; and Divine, Walt Disney and Cornelius from "The Planet of the Apes" disport themselves as they see fit.

From the names in this assemblage, you might presume - correctly - that Vellekoop is gay. His works unapologetically confirm this. They are invariably urban and cosmopolitan, and usually decadent. As a gay man myself, I have found him most valuable for his explorations of two otherwise incongruous art forms: opera and pornography, each of which plays a significant part in the lives of so many urban queers. What is it that places Ryan Idol on a level with Renee Fleming? In Vellekoop's works, the answer becomes clear: both opera and pornography create separate realms of pure ecstasy, one achieved through orchestral and vocal beauty, the other through physical beauty (and fucking).

This is not to sell him short; he is far from a one-note cartoonist. His intelligence is nimble, his scope vast; his cartooning is fleet and lovely, his colors almost vulgar in their unabashed gorgeousness.