Anders NilsenRezensionen

3.5. The incredibly beautiful artwork and poignant philosophical musings are often overshadowed somewhat by the fact that all the finch characters are exactly identical, so determining who is doing what and when, especially given the episodic nature of the narrative, is often very difficult. Also, not sure how I feel about the character of the Idiot--he seems like a needlessly literal and somewhat insensitive rendering of the Holy Fool archetype.

A very quick read (took all of 30 minutes, maybe 45) but the art is beautiful and the stories fun and thought provoking.

What would Poseidon do faced with our current total disregard for the world's oceans?

What would Prometheus think of what his gift has wrought?

What if Isaac was old enough to engage with Abraham on the mountain, what would he have thought of the whole thing?

These and a few more questions are tackled in the pages (well, page since the book is one long accordion reminiscent of the scrolls on which these stories are based) of this book.

As a side note, I really want to find a way to showcase the entirety of this accordion of pictures at once. But the length of wall necessary to do so is rather out of my price range.

My first time reading anything by this author. I enjoyed the novel and found the approach to storytelling and being a graphic novel different than anything I've previously read. Definitely this book has a tone and style all to its own. I enjoyed the birds and different characters. I think more could have been done to keep the story moving in different ways, at time I found the pace a bit slow. Overall would be interested in reading other novels by this author.

I don't read a lot of comics, but Anders Nilsen's minimalist, philosophical, anthropomorphic work called to me. His artwork is seductive and the slowly paced and dreamlike plot through these 600 pages and ten years of Nilsen's work kind of just draws you in.

Dogs and Water is a dreamy foray for Nilsen while still maintaining the elegance, humor, and tension of his other projects. Less overtly philosophical in the dialogue, Dogs and Water relies on encounters and actions to draw out existential quandaries and ruminations that draw me to Nilsen's work.

This collection of sketchbook drawings reminded me a lot if Nilsen's earlier work with Calculating The Density of Black Holes. Yet, the aphorisms felt looser and more insightful within the play of this collection and the moments of travel and "reality" so well rendered I appreciated the lack of consistent trajectory. It felt like it connected more to me in my own wanderings and musings, but way way better than my own.

Anders Nilsen is my all-time favorite graphica artist and his sketchbook meditation on grief and loss is poignant, funny, human, and real damn sad. I found myself in so many of the conversations and contradictions that underpin the death of a loved one (though not the loved one in my case). I'm also pretty damn impressed he maintains such a vaunted standard for his sketches.

Tongues is jaw-dropping and gorgeous. The mythology of Nilsen's worlds is always deep, and often understated and surreal, and Tongues has those qualities with a proportional gravitas of an epic fantasy work. I love seeing Nilsen's work in color, particularly the panel sequence of Prometheus and the eagle, which is worth the cost of the book by itself.

I'm on mobile, so this review will be made of things like this.

Birds discuss an egg, which is a bomb.

The birds look alike in frame, but not in the lovely character key, which is located in the lovely French flaps, which also contain short bird bios, which can be used to unlock which bird is speaking, even though it doesn't really matter.

But the dead birds don't look like the live birds. They share opinions Švankmajerly.

The idiot's grandmother dies before their house is destroyed by the giant.

The crows and pilot are cruel, the snake isn't.

Bayle is good or crazy.

Dogs.

Swans.

Great, but dear god I hope I never read this again.

Nilsen makes several stylistic choices with this book that I had a hard time embracing, but it's still an interesting look at how we construct stories/images of humanity versus those of some supposed "higher" order of being (Greek mythology, Judeo-Christian religion).

The use of second person narrative viewpoint in the text is one of those love it/hate it things, I suppose. Some readers seem to feel that it places them "in" the story. Others find it very distancing in almost the exact opposite way. I don't generally enjoy reading second person very much. Here, I think it sort of works in making the viewpoint of a godlike character more mundane, which seems to be the aim. But I couldn't help wondering wether first or third person wouldn't have felt more alive.

The artwork utilizes silhouettes, which emphasizes the flat, inhuman, unkowable-ness of the diety characters. Once again, this seems like a double edged sword that helps to juxtapose the mythological element against the contemporary human world Nilsen is twisting them into, yet also removes most of the possibility for visual nuance or emotion in the drawings. Probably very intentional on Nilsen's part, but I didn't find it to be all that effective. I'll admit that I also just miss the amazing detail that makes a lot of his previous artwork so beautiful to me.

Lastly, the accordion fold book construction. I can't see what this achieves at all. The art on individual pages does not really interact much visually when you look at a section of a bunch of pages accordioned "out". It makes the book a bit physically awkward to read. And once again, if anything, I can only see it as a further distancing effect on the reader.

I think Nilsen is an amazing and ambitious artist/writer (his Big Questions is a monumental piece of comics/graphic novel work), but this one was more of a curious experiment for me.

Nilsen makes several stylistic choices with this book that I had a hard time embracing, but it's still an interesting look at how we construct stories/images of humanity versus those of some supposed "higher" order of being (Greek mythology, Judeo-Christian religion).

The use of second person narrative viewpoint in the text is one of those love it/hate it things, I suppose. Some readers seem to feel that it places them "in" the story. Others find it very distancing in almost the exact opposite way. I don't generally enjoy reading second person very much. Here, I think it sort of works in making the viewpoint of a godlike character more mundane, which seems to be the aim. But I couldn't help wondering wether first or third person wouldn't have felt more alive.

The artwork utilizes silhouettes, which emphasizes the flat, inhuman, unkowable-ness of the diety characters. Once again, this seems like a double edged sword that helps to juxtapose the mythological element against the contemporary human world Nilsen is twisting them into, yet also removes most of the possibility for visual nuance or emotion in the drawings. Probably very intentional on Nilsen's part, but I didn't find it to be all that effective. I'll admit that I also just miss the amazing detail that makes a lot of his previous artwork so beautiful to me.

Lastly, the accordion fold book construction. I can't see what this achieves at all. The art on individual pages does not really interact much visually when you look at a section of a bunch of pages accordioned "out". It makes the book a bit physically awkward to read. And once again, if anything, I can only see it as a further distancing effect on the reader.

I think Nilsen is an amazing and ambitious artist/writer (his Big Questions is a monumental piece of comics/graphic novel work), but this one was more of a curious experiment for me.

This is a good book, it's very fun and cute... but ultimately the end didn't have the punch I was hoping for after 750 pages, so I'm sorry, 3 stars is all you get. It's 3.5, because it was super cute and fun and weird and all that... I don't know, maybe I should read it again...

Esta hermosa y minimalista historia es la culminación de más de diez años de trabajo, un período que abarca desde sus experiencias juveniles con la autoedición hasta su consolidación como autor de ámbito internacional. Seiscientas páginas detallan los dilemas metafísicos y/o rutinarios de los habitantes de una llanura interminable, que existe en algún lugar entre un sueño y una estepa rusa. Un avión derribado es confundido con un pájaro y la bomba sin explotar que transporta con un huevo gigante. El piloto superviviente resulta también de gran interés para las aves, que se dividen entre las que buscan obstinadamente su aprobación y las que le pagan con su aprensión o su indiferencia. Esto conduce a grandes tensiones en el grupo y a nuevos e inesperados hallazgos .Anders Nilsen se mueve sin problemas entre la angustia y el humor con un estilo gráfico característico: líneas estilizadas, acompañadas de grandes espacios en blanco y paneles de gran tamaño que le permiten dotar a la narración de un ritmo sincopado y lírico, profusamente imitado por sus contemporáneos.

Naive but well-meaning finches attempt to assist a surly self-destructive pilot and a slow-witted mute boy, as caustic crows provide commentary over dead flesh dinners, an owl stays on task, and a snake surprises. Sort of a bleak read, but if it's meant to be a fable we can conclude that morality is elastic, goodness is not often rewarded, and the masses are huddled out there in suspended animation. Oh, and guns are bad. Or at least that's how I saw it.

Nilsen unerringly points out why some faiths, myths and ad hominems are the marathon-winners across time and civilizations. The presentation and style are woodcut-like throwbacks that hint at some grim origins and lend humour and the handcrafted feel in an accordion format. These all help to emphasize the mythological subject matter, especially with several scenes comparatively visible at a glance. Faith, immortality, mortal concerns, war, the invisible, ethics, virtue and metaphysics are all skillfully brought to life in a tiny book with monumental presentation. Those post-secondary institutions that wish to establish relevant and meaningful classics and philosophy courses would do well to incorporate visual narrative climaxes such as those found in Rage of Poseidon, if only for comparative and discussion purposes. Four stars for being almost as accessible for children as the author's Big Questions (2011).

Absolutely lovely graphic novel. Nilsen's simple drawings paired with his philosophical/literary leanings and gentle humor made for a surprisingly quick read. Highly recommended and another example of the strength and potential of the graphic novel medium.

I'm obsessed with this guy's drawing and strange dreamy story-telling. This is my favorite of all his books. Like a fairy tale without a plot, Dogs and Water follows a boy with a teddy bear strapped to his back as he walks through a desert and also is sometimes marooned at sea. The elegant art takes you into someone else’s dreamworld. You can’t explain it; you can only experience it.

It's like a dreamy comics version of The Road. He's on a journey to nowhere in particular, surrounded by nothing, and his company is a stuffed teddy bear who is encouraging him to go on even when he thinks--knows--it's pointless. A bleak but excellent story.

I wasn't going to buy this because it was fairly expensive, even used, but I kept flipping through it and couldn't stop reading it, so I had to. Then it took me almost a year to read it.
It's a doorstop sized graphic novel drawn in the ligne claire (clear line) style I love. I liked it a lot but I can't explain what it's about. Some finches and their interactions; a pilot who crashes; the birds think he’s emerged from an egg and that they should feed him; a retarded boy whose grandmother dies, leaving him to wander; a finch who is taken under the earth by a serpent.

This massive graphic novel grapples with some deep philosophical issues through the stories of a flock of tiny birds, a mentally retarded orphan, and a crashed jet pilot. I can’t say that I actually “got” what the author was depicting but the illustrations were beautiful and it did make me think a lot. Once I got into the book, I couldn’t put it down, or I wouldn’t have it the tome weren’t so heavy that my arms got tired.

An enormous (almost 600 pages!) graphic novel, that somehow intermingles the stories of a flock of birds with a grandma and her grandson and a pilot who crash lands his plane. A book that is both simple and profound, sad and happy, quiet and busy, concrete and deep.

This is meant to be more funny than philosophical. The blurb should probably make that more clear. For philosophical, see Dogs and Water. This is the kind of fun (scribbled-over faces) you'd find in a lot of notebooks. No, there's no vulgarity or nudity. It's very much my kind of humor but more of library read than a purchase for anyone, I would guess. Do you usually buy joke books? That should decide you.

This is best enjoyed in multiple sittings.

7 linked graphic "short stories" -- very short, perhaps closer to flash fiction -- black & white, mostly wordless but for a talkative, nihilistic crow uttering lines such as, "Now you're dead animal, like us: the walking, flying dead. Always hungry, feeding on the misfortune of the world. It's a hard taste to forget. Once you've had it you can't go back."

The story that worked for me was the wordless (except for a comment indicated by indecipherable squiggles which is an aside made by one swan to another swan) "Pilot's Dream Part 6." A man walks through a vast, featureless wasteland. Rumbles from beneath the ground. The earth erupts, and out crawls ....