Hot Jazz

“Start with the tune, spiral off into foot-tapping fantasy, then come back to the tune a few hours later, that’s what Charlie Parker did, and that’s what Hunt Emerson does too, except that he does it with the story. The story of Max Zillion, the ace saxophonist man-handling his chosen instrument Alto Ego, rising to artistic heights with music and sinking through financial depths thanks to the machinations of Mean McMudda, the eternal agent who takes 100% and then some. Hunt Emerson is the only cartoonist who has had the courage to take jazz as his story, and he improvises on it like Charlie Parker did. Hunt Emerson is the arch-romantic, because Max Zillion always plays like a genius, and the arch-realist, because Max always loses out, and that is what jazz is all about.” Miles Kington