Customer Reviews

Monologues for the Coming Plague

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Anders Nilsen's spare artistry and stream-of-consciousness writing have earned him praise as an absurdist visionary in contemporary art comics. This collection doesn't disappoint, with its series of sketchbook drawings that portray the foibles of characters who struggle to find meaning in their everyday lives. The scenes featuring a woman feeding a bird are particularly poignant. And the section titled "Semiotics" manages to be smart-alecky without foreclosing sympathy for the two characters in dialogue.

I didn't care for the final fifth of the book, materially sectioned off as it is by the use of different stock paper. Don't get me wrong: the folks at Fantagraphics have done an amazing job designing this book, and it's a beautiful volume to have in one's collection. But encountering the different stock is something of a diversion, as it doesn't add a significant layer of literary or graphic meaning to the sketches at hand.

The other issue I have with this portion of the book is that one section, titled "The Mediocrity Principle," is a wee self-indulgent when it comes to the absurdist, existential themes that Nilsen likes to explore. Whereas previous sections muse on the "meaning" of everyday life in a spare, offhand manner, "The Mediocrity Principle" is disappointingly explicit in one character's stated desire to be "average." In reading this section, I wished Nilsen left his themes to the simple, awkward exchanges between the Semiotics characters.

Overall, though, this is a fine contribution to the growing absurdist comics tradition, of which Nilsen is no doubt a trailblazer.

Anders Nilsen, <strong>Monologues for the Coming Plague</strong> (Fantagraphics Books, 2006)

I was fond enough of <em>Dogs and Water</em> (viz. 14Mar2009 review) to go looking for more of Anders Nilsen's work, and the title of this one intrigued me from the first time I saw it; one of the libraries in my system, all of which seem notoriously slow at getting things in, finally grabbed a copy last year, so I put it on hold and waited patiently until last week. What I can tell you after reading it: <em>Dogs and Water</em> it is not, by any means.

While Nilsen mentions in a brief afterword that he did rearrange a few things for the sake of continuity (of which there is a bit, but not much), it is inferred that this is simply excerpts from two sketchbooks, complete with markouts and the like. This does serve in that it seems to fit rather well with Nilsen's overarching existential crisis/semiotics theme, but could just as easily be dismissed as laziness, if you're so inclined. While there are some pieces here that make use of that theme (by far the best of these is "Pittsburgh", an <em>Our Town</em>-esque journey in which one character's head becomes the head of a different animal in each frame of the first two-thirds of the story, depending on how he's feeling and/or what he's doing), too much of the book seems to be just alternate takes on a single joke; there are long stretches containing the same woman-feeding-a-bird setup with variations (sometimes very slight) on a punchline. Two or three wouldn't have been out of place in <em>The New Yorker</em>, but the combined weight of seventy or so is a bit deleterious. For the completist only. **

Reading this book is like watching an artist have fun. These are from a sketchbook, I believe, and read fairly quickly. But I find myself laughing alone ALL THE TIME whenever I pick this up. If you want some fun, sardonic and surreal giggles, this is the one.
I believe the work could probably stand up to scrutiny and a fair amount of critical deconstruction... but it's not really about that for me. There's a certain honesty and play involved in this book, that I find myself reveling in that space between the artist's mind and the drawing on the page. Often it's a function of "jeez, how did he come up with this?" or "WHAT IS THAT??" And I love the surprise, and the shifts from competely surreal and non-referential free-association (seeming) cartoons to more complete thoughts that are actually carried out for a while. Both provide a different sort of satisfaction.
The drawings are crude, to be certain, but I don't know if it would work any other way. Again, Anders seems really keen to what a certain seen requires, and what can be left out, and almost always makes excellent choices. Favorite quote: "Great, great. Okay now meditate on the radiant eightfold waterway. I'll be back in a while. I have to meet some friends to watch the game."