BEATLES WITH AN A! HC (KNOCKABOUT) (MR) [Mauri Kunnas]

These are the first beats of the Beatles’ career as only legendary rock cartoonist Mauri Kunnas could tell them. The cover depicts John, Paul, George, and Ringo crossing the street Abbey Road style, but the street’s in Hamburg’s seedy Reeperbahn red-light district, and the flip cover adds lost Beatles Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe to the mix. Kunnas chronicles the band from Ringo’s birth (against a backdrop of the Luftwaffe shelling Liverpool) through the release of their hit, “Please Please Me”/”Ask Me Why.” Focusing on the band’s pre-fame days in a sly and irreverent style (and not shying away from Brian Epstein’s fixation upon John), Kunnas makes liberal use of corny in-jokes and hokey wordplay, but it’s all done in good fun.