Paper Blog Update Supplemental Postcard Set Sticker Pack
Anders Nilsen, writer/artist
self-published, November 2009
16 pages, 7 postcards, 1 sticker
$10.95
A slice of history here: This minicomic/postcard set/collection of beautiful drawings of bird heads labeled with names like “Beyonce,” “Mister Peanut,” and “Paul Wolfowitz” contains the very first of Nilsen’s “Monloguist” strips. Monologues for the Coming Plauge, Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes, The End, and even Nilsen’s blog itself wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the first few strips in which blacked-out stick figures spoke dialogue jotted down during Nilsen’s conversations with friends on a trip to Switzerland. (“I think it’s bad, looking at the ass. I don’t mean spiritually, either,” says a figure I’m reasonably sure is Sammy Harkham.) It’s fascinating to see how rapidly all the tics and tropes that have made this style of Nilsen’s so quietly haunting develop: the blacked-out mistakes, the seemingly random distortion or deconstruction of the Monloguist, the sudden shifts from banal observations and list-making to gaze-into-the-abyss despair and back again. But the illustration work included here, including a fascinating postcard image of a deer and some boulders nestled in the strange branches of some bizarre alien-looking tree, offer ample evidence of the raw chops with which Nilsen complements his experimental zeal. I dare say that if you send any of the postcards to anyone, you’re liable either to get married or never hear from them again. A fascinating little package from a serious best-of-his-generation candidate.
Tags: comics, comics reviews, Comics Time, reviews