This Week's Cartoons  David B., Shel Silverstein, Posy Simmonds,
Jaime Hernandez, Bob Callahan, and Ho Che Anderson   By David B.
(Pantheon, $25) From suffering, art. Yet someone else's
suffering is a different matter. Graphic novelist Pierre-
François Beauchard takes up the challenge presented by his older
brother, Jean-Christophe, whose chronically deteriorating health
prevents him from telling their family history himself. Writing
under his comic-book nom de plume, David B., Beauchard relates
how his family suffered under the weight of Jean-Christophe's
malady during the '60s and '70s, how the disease gradually
became a presence of its own—almost a person—with a shape and
personality like some monster in the night. Young Pierre-
François regularly meets with such monsters in the forest
outside his home; Epileptic freely allows the boy's imagination
to meld with the grown artist's pen. Long-beaked creatures and
talking skeletons out of Mexico's Day of the Dead gather by
moonlight with Aztec serpents, only the