While reading the comics of Neil Swaab, you might think that the artist is some kind of pervert. Swaab's popular weekly comic strip, "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles," about a guy and his imaginary teddy bear, reads like a twisted "Calvin & Hobbes," dealing with subjects like debauchery, lewd sex, and religion—all in a really dark, obscene, and totally hilarious way.

Imagine one's surprise to learn that Neil Swaab is really quite a normal 24-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, works as a children's book designer, and even has a girlfriend. Swaab, who grew up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, moved to New York in 2000 after graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in illustration. Shortly after settling in, he managed to place his comic strip in the New York Press and Real Detroit Weekly , where they've appeared weekly ever since.

Armed with an imagination that seems boundless, Swaab has been able to comment on a dimension of human behavior that's pretty grim—and he does so with a fair degree of poignancy. "'Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles' is an antisocial comic about alienation, perversion, and white-bread Middle America," says Swaab. (In other words, it ain't no "Blondie.") "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles" comes from a tradition of outrageous work from authors not all so outrageous personally, but who have an incredibly sharp view of life around them. Think Henry Miller, or Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho , or A.M. Homes's The End of Alice . "I don't think Neil Swaab is any more perverted than the rest of us," maintains Sean Tejeratchi, art director of the New York Press . "He's just a bit more honest about the world."

While Swaab's comics serve as a base for his neuroses and impolitical thoughts, his editorial illustrations display his capacity for searing critical commentary. For a New York Press article addressing the Armenian Holocaust of 1915-1918, when close to one million Armenians were massacred by the Turkish Ottoman army, Swaab created a riveting send-up of the Turkish flag, in which the crescent moon is replaced by a human skull.

Swaab's illustrations show true range. His recently self-published collection of "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles" comics reveals the evolution, even in just a few years, of his progress as an artist, and of his distinctive visual signature. If there is one thing that can be learned from looking at his work as a whole, it's that there isn't anything he won't draw or say. "People are so worried in general about saying things [that could be considered offensive]," he observes. "My work is pretty much about laughing about everything."