Annabelle Frumbatt: A Gastronomically Ghastly Tale (Tight Sweater Press) by Nina Bays is a deliciously gory cartoon about the perils of dieting. When little Annabelle starts getting fat, her friends’ and family’s disgust drives her to a drastic plan to slim down. Bays’s darkly comic rhyming fable balances a sense of the ridiculous with sharp insight into diet culture, while Lauren Gardiner’s beautiful black-and-white drawings bring Annabelle and her culinary dreams to life. This small volume is unusual among recent graphic narratives and comics, in that both poetry and art are integral to the story: the two complement each other perfectly. And it has a gruesome conclusion that administers a slap in the face to all dieters and stomach-stapled celebrities.