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Death in Trieste
The cartoonist known as Jason returns with a collection of three short graphic stories, connected by an absurdist thread, showcasing his idiosyncratic cultural obsessions, clear line style, and deadpan humor.The title story, “Death in Trieste,” sets the scene in 1920s Berlin, a bustling cultural hotspot in the shadow of the coming Nazism. Here, a host of unlikely characters — time-travelling David Bowie, Rasputin, Nosferatu, Marlene Dietrich, and more — are all connected by a group of Dadaists who perform the art of rationality through madness. In “The Magritte Affair,” a wisecracking pair of detectives must crack a case involving art forgeries, masked men, and mysterious disappearances — all linked to the surrealist world of the famous Belgian painter. Finally, in “Sweet Dreams,” Jason reimagines the New Wave artists of the 1980s as X-Men-esque superheroes. While this supergroup easily dispatches such supernatural threats as living mummies, animated suits of armor, and rampaging golems, they soon face their biggest challenge yet, as a giant meteorite hurtles toward the Earth.
- GenresComicsGraphic NovelsArt
176 pages, Hardcover
First published October 14, 2024
5 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Jason
114 books709 followersJohn Arne Sæterøy, better known by the pen name Jason, is an internationally acclaimed Norwegian cartoonist. Jason's comics are known for their distinctive, stone-faced anthropomorphic characters as well as their pace reminiscent of classic films.
Jason was born in 1965 and debuted in the early 80's, when still a teenager, in the Norwegian comics magazine 'KonK'. His first graphic novel Pocket Full of Rain (1995) won the Sproing Award, one of the main national awards for cartoonist.
In 2001 Jason started a fruitful collaboration with the American publisher Fantagraphics, which helped him gain international notoriety. Besides Norway and the U.S., his comics have appeared in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil.
Jason's stories feature a peculiar mix of dry humour, surrealism and tropes from a variety of pulp genres, such as noir novels and monster movies. His most celebrated works include: Hey, Wait... (2001), a tale of childhood and trauma; You Can't Get There from Here (2004), a re-telling of the myth of Frankenstein; The Left Bank Gang (2007), featuring fictional versions of Hemingway and other writers living in Paris in the 1920s; I Killed Adolf Hitler (2008), a story that mixes romance and time travel; The Last Musketeer (2009), a love letter to old sci-fi imaginary featuring king's musketeer Athos; Low Moon (2010), one of his many collections of short stories; Werewolves of Montpellier (2010); Isle of 100,000 Graves (2011), a pirate story co-written with French cartoonist Fabien Vehlmann; Lost Cat (2013), a thriller with a surreal spin.
Jason won a Harvey Award for best new talent in 2002 and Eisner Awards in the category 'Best U.S. Edition of International Material' for three consecutive years (2007-2009).
He has lived in Denmark, Belgium, the U.S., eventually setting for Montpellier, France in 2007.
Jason was born in 1965 and debuted in the early 80's, when still a teenager, in the Norwegian comics magazine 'KonK'. His first graphic novel Pocket Full of Rain (1995) won the Sproing Award, one of the main national awards for cartoonist.
In 2001 Jason started a fruitful collaboration with the American publisher Fantagraphics, which helped him gain international notoriety. Besides Norway and the U.S., his comics have appeared in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil.
Jason's stories feature a peculiar mix of dry humour, surrealism and tropes from a variety of pulp genres, such as noir novels and monster movies. His most celebrated works include: Hey, Wait... (2001), a tale of childhood and trauma; You Can't Get There from Here (2004), a re-telling of the myth of Frankenstein; The Left Bank Gang (2007), featuring fictional versions of Hemingway and other writers living in Paris in the 1920s; I Killed Adolf Hitler (2008), a story that mixes romance and time travel; The Last Musketeer (2009), a love letter to old sci-fi imaginary featuring king's musketeer Athos; Low Moon (2010), one of his many collections of short stories; Werewolves of Montpellier (2010); Isle of 100,000 Graves (2011), a pirate story co-written with French cartoonist Fabien Vehlmann; Lost Cat (2013), a thriller with a surreal spin.
Jason won a Harvey Award for best new talent in 2002 and Eisner Awards in the category 'Best U.S. Edition of International Material' for three consecutive years (2007-2009).
He has lived in Denmark, Belgium, the U.S., eventually setting for Montpellier, France in 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 6, 2025
Jason is objectively my favorite cartoonist. That’s why I give all his comics five stars—biased and unfounded.
Please understand me: I’m a fan of Jason. And even when your favorite artist releases something mediocre, you’re still happy about it. Because love is irrational and blind.
Please understand me: I’m a fan of Jason. And even when your favorite artist releases something mediocre, you’re still happy about it. Because love is irrational and blind.
February 19, 2025
Cualquier cosa que cuente Jason es un desafío al lector por ese estilo tan escueto y minimalista tanto en el dibujo como en la narración. Allá te las apañes con el sentido de cada viñeta y de la obra en conjunto. Pero cada uno de sus dibujos atrapa tu atención, y vas encadenando viñetas y diálogos para conseguir ver el resultado final de estos misterios policiacos, aunque te encuentres con que son más un cachondeo que otra cosa.
Me ha resultado especialmente entretenido “El caso Magritte”, con ese sentido del humor tan propio y subliminal. En “Dulces sueños” me he perdido un poco, pero he disfrutado el espíritu dadaísta/surrealista de cada relato, y me sigue pareciendo uno de los mejores autores de cómic actuales.
Me ha resultado especialmente entretenido “El caso Magritte”, con ese sentido del humor tan propio y subliminal. En “Dulces sueños” me he perdido un poco, pero he disfrutado el espíritu dadaísta/surrealista de cada relato, y me sigue pareciendo uno de los mejores autores de cómic actuales.
September 30, 2025
I have yet to read a book by Jason that I don’t absolutely adore. This collection of comic stories has it all: adventure, poetry, surrealism, ennui, burglary, Rasputin’s skull, David Bowie and much more. His work is funny and thoughtful and poetic. Can’t get enough of his work.
January 17, 2026
I have a soft spot for Dada, Magritte, and Bowie, so, of course I dig this.
December 16, 2025
Jason is an international treasure of the comix scene. If you don't know his work, Death In Trieste is a great place to start: a collection of satisfying shorts that smelts history, pop culture, and skewed genre tropes with a brilliantly dry, subtly surreal sense of humor. 8/10
March 2, 2025
Been a while since I read a Jason book. Definitely not his best but it's fun, as always. It's a tryptic of stories that couldn't be more different from each other. The first one is an absurd mystery featuring the Magritte Gang turning people into bowler hat wearing zombies. The second one is a dada poem in visual form, and I didn't understand anything (might go for a reread). The last one is a new wave/psych rock inspired end of the world action comedy. As per usual, there's a ton of pop culture references. Bowie makes a couple of appearances, Pink Floyd as well. Athos is always in the background. And I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff
October 22, 2025
Death in Trieste (2024, but 2025 in English), by Jason I consumed as I have always done over the years, in one or two fast sittings.. It features three stories that might not quite equal his best work, but I still really dig parts of it. The main thrust is absurdism, as we face the Apocalypse, the result of Rationality.
Death in Venice is a book by Thomas Mann that had as its foundation the coming WWI and the study rise of TB;; could he be in this title referring to those things in his title, a place where in 1917 James Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara (the absurdist) all lived for a time. Just an idea.
*The Magritte Affair obviously references the French painter who painted surrealist landscapes. Is Jason surrealist? No, more absurdist, and he’s more Harpo Marx than Karl Marx, let’s say. But Magritte did join the Communist party in 1930! Whatever. So it’s The what affair? Not Dreyfus, of turn of the twentieth century fame. But The Magritte Affair, a detective case of missing artist forced to create Magriette counterfeits. A portrait of David Bowie comes in; Magritte speaks in surrealistic sentences rather than communicating in conventional language. Why? Oh it’s silly, but it features a mash-up of things Jason likes: The tec genre and modern art. The absurd way Magritte talks is a way of answering the eternal goofy question most people might not care about: What if you extend the crazy Dada art of Magritte to his talk? How would that sound? What would he say?
*Death in Trieste ends with the image of the character of Death in Trieste. Not Death in Venice, as in Thomas Mann’s novella, but Trieste, where we meet Lenin, Rasputin, Marlene Dietrich, Athos, poetry performances, and people speaking (again) Dada dialogue all the way through, not that much unlike in The Magritte affair. So enough already with the Dad-speak, Jason. Extending the joke a little too far. Do I think a reader without any experience with the absurd or Dada will “get it”? No. But it is more absurd and abstract than anything else he has done.
*Sweet Dreams references the story in the news we read from time to time that an asteroid might hit the planet and destroy it. The title references the Eurythmics song as the piece is in part about the eighties New Wave musical movement ,then because this is Jaosn, also mummies, and you know, the eighties musicians form a king of X-Men group to try to save the planet. The end of the world seems nigh as the asteroid steadily descends. . .
This is amazing cartooning, as always, a master class. But in the whole pantheon of Jason’s greatest hits, this is not on my mixtape. But since I am an old absurdism/Dada fan, and like Matisse and so on, and appreciate the apocalypse theme with humor, I was entertained.
Death in Venice is a book by Thomas Mann that had as its foundation the coming WWI and the study rise of TB;; could he be in this title referring to those things in his title, a place where in 1917 James Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara (the absurdist) all lived for a time. Just an idea.
*The Magritte Affair obviously references the French painter who painted surrealist landscapes. Is Jason surrealist? No, more absurdist, and he’s more Harpo Marx than Karl Marx, let’s say. But Magritte did join the Communist party in 1930! Whatever. So it’s The what affair? Not Dreyfus, of turn of the twentieth century fame. But The Magritte Affair, a detective case of missing artist forced to create Magriette counterfeits. A portrait of David Bowie comes in; Magritte speaks in surrealistic sentences rather than communicating in conventional language. Why? Oh it’s silly, but it features a mash-up of things Jason likes: The tec genre and modern art. The absurd way Magritte talks is a way of answering the eternal goofy question most people might not care about: What if you extend the crazy Dada art of Magritte to his talk? How would that sound? What would he say?
*Death in Trieste ends with the image of the character of Death in Trieste. Not Death in Venice, as in Thomas Mann’s novella, but Trieste, where we meet Lenin, Rasputin, Marlene Dietrich, Athos, poetry performances, and people speaking (again) Dada dialogue all the way through, not that much unlike in The Magritte affair. So enough already with the Dad-speak, Jason. Extending the joke a little too far. Do I think a reader without any experience with the absurd or Dada will “get it”? No. But it is more absurd and abstract than anything else he has done.
*Sweet Dreams references the story in the news we read from time to time that an asteroid might hit the planet and destroy it. The title references the Eurythmics song as the piece is in part about the eighties New Wave musical movement ,then because this is Jaosn, also mummies, and you know, the eighties musicians form a king of X-Men group to try to save the planet. The end of the world seems nigh as the asteroid steadily descends. . .
This is amazing cartooning, as always, a master class. But in the whole pantheon of Jason’s greatest hits, this is not on my mixtape. But since I am an old absurdism/Dada fan, and like Matisse and so on, and appreciate the apocalypse theme with humor, I was entertained.
December 25, 2025
Not a bad Jason entry!
Three stories. The triptych seems like a good format for him. (Good Night, Hem is one of my favorites in that category.) Subject-wise, this feels like it picks up from Upside Dawn, the sprawling, uneven collection from ~3 years ago, with its emphasis on surrealism, Dada-ist poetry, and celebrity cameos… some of which starts to wear thin. There are limits to the recognizability of Jason's characters: Too many of them—and too many absurdist happenings—can make the stories hard to track; likewise, without clear labeling, his celebrity caricatures (in this case, ’80s new wave musicians) can be hard to identify. But these stories are longer and better developed than those in Upside Dawn.
I think this one's a grower, clarifying and improving upon rereading.
THE MAGRITTE AFFAIR - Someone, or some entity, is replacing wall art in people's homes with Magritte paintings, causing the recipients to dress in black suits and bowler hats and spout surrealist gibberish.
DEATH IN TRIESTE - The assassination of Rasputin in St. Petersberg kicks off a story set in Berlin 1925, which follows intertwining threads of various characters—including a Dada-ist performance trio, glam-era David Bowie, a pair of dance hall girls (Isabelle & Mai), Marlene Dietrich, Nosferatu, a mentalist with occult interests, and Isabelle's cognitively-declining father. Plus: A mysterious package changes hands!
SWEET DREAMS - Ragnarok is coming, the end of the world. But not to worry: ’80s new wave pop stars are on top of it! (Complete with superhero-style pin-ups.) Can they prevent disaster? Can they stop Jimmy Page from sowing chaos beforehand?
Since you asked, here's what I'd change:
1) The cover. No titling needed. The designer never cracked this nut. The font is awful, and the design… would be 10x more striking with just the drawing, leaving the title to the spine. The use of debossing is pointless. (That said, the title page looks great! Well-balanced.)
2) Page numbering. There is none. One story actually refers to page numbers. (Wake up, Fanta!)
3) Story separators: There's a neat idea here, but the result looks unfinished. The right angles are… arbitrary. I think they were stuck trying to carry through the ‘angle’ idea on the cover.
4) Cast of characters: The final story needed an accompanying ‘who's who’ graphic for all the ’80s pop icons; I couldn't identify most of them. There's a version of this on Jason's blog, but it's a little ‘on the nose’. To make it cheekier, he might have included *all* the book's main characters and/or identified the music celebrities in a more oblique, abbreviated fashion (e.g., Dave, Annie, Midge… or D. MacManus, S. Barrett, J. Page).
http://catswithoutdogs.blogspot.com/2...
(Due to lack of available pages, I'd say the closing endpapers would have been a good spot.)
Three stories. The triptych seems like a good format for him. (Good Night, Hem is one of my favorites in that category.) Subject-wise, this feels like it picks up from Upside Dawn, the sprawling, uneven collection from ~3 years ago, with its emphasis on surrealism, Dada-ist poetry, and celebrity cameos… some of which starts to wear thin. There are limits to the recognizability of Jason's characters: Too many of them—and too many absurdist happenings—can make the stories hard to track; likewise, without clear labeling, his celebrity caricatures (in this case, ’80s new wave musicians) can be hard to identify. But these stories are longer and better developed than those in Upside Dawn.
I think this one's a grower, clarifying and improving upon rereading.
THE MAGRITTE AFFAIR - Someone, or some entity, is replacing wall art in people's homes with Magritte paintings, causing the recipients to dress in black suits and bowler hats and spout surrealist gibberish.
DEATH IN TRIESTE - The assassination of Rasputin in St. Petersberg kicks off a story set in Berlin 1925, which follows intertwining threads of various characters—including a Dada-ist performance trio, glam-era David Bowie, a pair of dance hall girls (Isabelle & Mai), Marlene Dietrich, Nosferatu, a mentalist with occult interests, and Isabelle's cognitively-declining father. Plus: A mysterious package changes hands!
SWEET DREAMS - Ragnarok is coming, the end of the world. But not to worry: ’80s new wave pop stars are on top of it! (Complete with superhero-style pin-ups.) Can they prevent disaster? Can they stop Jimmy Page from sowing chaos beforehand?
Since you asked, here's what I'd change:
1) The cover. No titling needed. The designer never cracked this nut. The font is awful, and the design… would be 10x more striking with just the drawing, leaving the title to the spine. The use of debossing is pointless. (That said, the title page looks great! Well-balanced.)
2) Page numbering. There is none. One story actually refers to page numbers. (Wake up, Fanta!)
3) Story separators: There's a neat idea here, but the result looks unfinished. The right angles are… arbitrary. I think they were stuck trying to carry through the ‘angle’ idea on the cover.
4) Cast of characters: The final story needed an accompanying ‘who's who’ graphic for all the ’80s pop icons; I couldn't identify most of them. There's a version of this on Jason's blog, but it's a little ‘on the nose’. To make it cheekier, he might have included *all* the book's main characters and/or identified the music celebrities in a more oblique, abbreviated fashion (e.g., Dave, Annie, Midge… or D. MacManus, S. Barrett, J. Page).
http://catswithoutdogs.blogspot.com/2...
(Due to lack of available pages, I'd say the closing endpapers would have been a good spot.)
September 22, 2025
Norwegian cartoonist Jason has made so many great comics I’ve enjoyed over the years that it’s an automatic must-read when I see a new book from him. Although, given the quality of his last couple of books and now this one, I’m starting to feel like his best work is behind him, unfortunately.
Death in Trieste is a collection of three short comics. The Magritte Affair is a messy narrative about a gang of thieves stealing paintings and replacing them with copies of Magritte’s paintings while others end up dressing like him in bowler hats for some reason. The title story is a hodge-podge of things, one of which involves a magician using Rasputin’s skull to see the future (WW2). Sweet Dreams closes out the book where an asteroid headed to Earth brings mummies back to life and the only ones to stop them are ‘80s New Wave bands.
The Magritte Affair was unfocused and boring. Death in Trieste has the makings of a potentially decent story that Jason doesn’t realise. There’s the usual fun stuff you see throughout his books like time travel, action movie riffs, espionage, with pop culture figures like Marlene Dietrich and Nosferatu thrown in (Athos also makes a cameo), and I liked the idea of Rasputin’s skull showing the future. But it doesn’t come together satisfyingly. Sweet Dreams comes off like a crappier version of Jason’s earlier, far better comic, The Living and The Dead.
I still love Jason’s art which has always looked good to me - very clean, crisp lines, expressive and funny animal-headed characters and well-laid out panels. But, like his other post-COVID books Good Night, Hem and Upside Dawn, I just didn’t connect with Death in Trieste. 2020s Jason’s gone too far in the absurdist direction which has made his usually tightly-constructed stories feel meaningless and silly. So it is with Death in Trieste - disappointingly forgettable comics from an indisputable master.
Death in Trieste is a collection of three short comics. The Magritte Affair is a messy narrative about a gang of thieves stealing paintings and replacing them with copies of Magritte’s paintings while others end up dressing like him in bowler hats for some reason. The title story is a hodge-podge of things, one of which involves a magician using Rasputin’s skull to see the future (WW2). Sweet Dreams closes out the book where an asteroid headed to Earth brings mummies back to life and the only ones to stop them are ‘80s New Wave bands.
The Magritte Affair was unfocused and boring. Death in Trieste has the makings of a potentially decent story that Jason doesn’t realise. There’s the usual fun stuff you see throughout his books like time travel, action movie riffs, espionage, with pop culture figures like Marlene Dietrich and Nosferatu thrown in (Athos also makes a cameo), and I liked the idea of Rasputin’s skull showing the future. But it doesn’t come together satisfyingly. Sweet Dreams comes off like a crappier version of Jason’s earlier, far better comic, The Living and The Dead.
I still love Jason’s art which has always looked good to me - very clean, crisp lines, expressive and funny animal-headed characters and well-laid out panels. But, like his other post-COVID books Good Night, Hem and Upside Dawn, I just didn’t connect with Death in Trieste. 2020s Jason’s gone too far in the absurdist direction which has made his usually tightly-constructed stories feel meaningless and silly. So it is with Death in Trieste - disappointingly forgettable comics from an indisputable master.
September 20, 2025
This one's split into three.... The Magritte Affair, Death in Trieste, and Sweet Dreams. Briefly on each:
The Magritte Affair: a bit of an Inception-y art-prank thing that's got plenty to like. Some truly funny physical fight panels, some equally funny Dadaesque dialog, a quick and nifty refresher on Rene Magritte, and, y'know, a meditation on the importance of art and its impact on/to life.
Death in Trieste: Jason dips back into the Dada pool as well into his pop-histori-culture bag and this time comes out with Rasputin (cool skull-flashlight) and Marlene Dietrich, among others. I'd be lying if I claimed to fully get the end on this one, but I did enjoy the easy subbing out of a dementia patient for a slam-poetry champion.
Sweet Dreams: pedal to the floor yet again in the insane-o-meter on this one, starting on Easter Island, soaring up to the heavens to glimpse an erratically behaving asteroid, and then ending... into a stack of New Music Express magazines from the 80s? You'll come for the Ultravox and Eurythmics references, but you'll stay for the mummy fights. Again, what does it all truly mean? Not sure. But this might be what I took on a desert island if I had only one thing to read. Love the astral projection sequences here. The economy with which this author can communicate a really complicated idea is just outlandishly impressive. But I might have called him that before too.
The Magritte Affair: a bit of an Inception-y art-prank thing that's got plenty to like. Some truly funny physical fight panels, some equally funny Dadaesque dialog, a quick and nifty refresher on Rene Magritte, and, y'know, a meditation on the importance of art and its impact on/to life.
Death in Trieste: Jason dips back into the Dada pool as well into his pop-histori-culture bag and this time comes out with Rasputin (cool skull-flashlight) and Marlene Dietrich, among others. I'd be lying if I claimed to fully get the end on this one, but I did enjoy the easy subbing out of a dementia patient for a slam-poetry champion.
Sweet Dreams: pedal to the floor yet again in the insane-o-meter on this one, starting on Easter Island, soaring up to the heavens to glimpse an erratically behaving asteroid, and then ending... into a stack of New Music Express magazines from the 80s? You'll come for the Ultravox and Eurythmics references, but you'll stay for the mummy fights. Again, what does it all truly mean? Not sure. But this might be what I took on a desert island if I had only one thing to read. Love the astral projection sequences here. The economy with which this author can communicate a really complicated idea is just outlandishly impressive. But I might have called him that before too.
November 8, 2025
I wish I understood what was largely happening. Maybe TOO surreal for me, or the references too alien. Art is still good, there are some funny gags, cool sci-fi stuff is abundant, but yeah I didn't really enjoy this.
February 1, 2026
I picked this up because the artwork looked familiar - Mad Magazine, Art Spiegelman, something.
Dada storyline with investigators, Bowie, Magritte and other figures. Where will it go? Who will be there. Asteroid.
Dada storyline with investigators, Bowie, Magritte and other figures. Where will it go? Who will be there. Asteroid.
September 20, 2025
I usually love Jason's work, but this one was too out there for me.
September 28, 2025
Another Jason comic that feels too obscure for me to understand and dissect. None of these stories really connected with me, but I'll give it another shot in the future. Other recent Jason releases grew on me.
October 26, 2025
The Magritte story is decent, but the other 2 are tedious absurdity.
October 26, 2025
Halicinatory.
November 30, 2025
I like the simple art and weirdness, but nothing really resonated here for me.
December 7, 2025
4.5
Although a little difficult to follow in places (many characters, some similar looking), I eagerly wanted to see what would happen next, was clever and amusing.
Although a little difficult to follow in places (many characters, some similar looking), I eagerly wanted to see what would happen next, was clever and amusing.
December 27, 2025
Thrilled CCPL had him, this new. Very Dada.
Read
January 12, 2026I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure why.
January 20, 2026
I love Jason, but this one left me baffled. Some good imagery, but it just didn't hit like some of his other work.
January 28, 2026
Love the artwork but I had no idea what was going on
January 26, 2025
Three stories. The first, about the Magritte Gang, is relatively easy to follow. The same can't be said for the next two, which lack any straightforward narrative. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a common thread — it's just not easy to grasp all the elements or their meaning. But perhaps that’s where Jason is now: creating surreal (even Dadaist) visual poems meant to be experienced rather than fully understood.
May 30, 2025
Jason sine bøker er alltid en glede å lese med sine uventede innfall og vendinger og med morsomme persongallerier med en blanding av «kjendiser», figurer fra tidligere bøker og nye ansikter.
Denne boken er ikke blant hans aller beste, men jeg finner likevel mye her som får meg til både og smile og tenke.
Denne boken er ikke blant hans aller beste, men jeg finner likevel mye her som får meg til både og smile og tenke.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews