In this way, time and time again, the cartoonist denies his forms of heft, leaving structures looking like cardboard façades. With Laser Eye Surgery, the New York cartoonist’s long-form debut from Fantagraphics Underground, Tate leans into this sleight of physicality by focusing on vision itself. And yet Tate’s protagonist is not a mere everyman, designed for optimal reader projection. With his biggest work to date, Walker Tate seems to feel very strongly that it is a small, small world after all — its small people hatch small schemes, and its smaller people suffer. But whether or not it’s the world that’s small or the imagination behind it is a different question entirely.