Almost Silent

by Jason

This graphic novel omnibus includes You Can't Get There From Here, about a monster love triangle; Tell Me Something, about love, recovered; Meow Baby!, short genre comics; and The Living and the Dead, a hilariously deadpan (and gory) take on the traditional Romero-style zombie thriller. All of these yarns star Jason's patented cast of tight-lipped (or -beaked) bird-, dog-, cat- and wolf-people, and showcase his compassion and wry wit.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comedy, Comix, Comic Book

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just reread and reviewed individual volumes collected in this one volume, which I also now have, a little obsessively. As he says, observantly, all four books are either silent or most silent, in that they are almost completely wordless, depending on the images to convert the narratives. Often 3 panel strips, sometimes a single page, sometimes titled longer form stories, sometimes not titles. The longer form titles such as Hey, Wait, Why Are You Doing This, Lost Cat, I killed Adolph Hitler, The Left Bank Gang, I prefer, see as stronger, I guess, evidence of craft development.

The four books are still great, don't get me wrong, as I say in my reviews, all 4 star books:

Meow, Baby

Tell Me Something

You Can't Get There From Here

The Living and the Dead

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

No author I know right now is as gripping as Jason. I read these all right away in one sitting without feeling pressured. The idea of reading the entire collection of Jason's work in a single day does not sound all that masochistic.

But I don't like Jason's more silent works (I even preferred 'Shh!' to these, which was completely silent!) They rely more heavily on his distinctive fast-paced action scenes, which are brilliant, but that I enjoy most when they lead to the events found in stronger narratives of his, such as in 'Hey Wait' or 'Why Are You Doing This'. What can be seen by reading this is that Jason's dialogue adds. Without the narrative, this is passionless action, the comedy or tragedy of it is lost. I wish Jason would use more colour and words in his work, it does it justice.

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contains 4 mostly silent Jason books. The largest is the humour book Meow, Baby! and three novellas.

All are pretty great on their own, but this collection gets a bonus star for just being so consistently great. I've read it through at least 3 times over the past decade, probably some of the novellas I've read more than that. It's a quick and enjoyable read and I always notice something new.

Meow, Baby!
Wonderful collection of short humorous strips. Most are silent, with just a couple near the end having any dialogue.

Most of the strips have Universal style monsters in the real world. Frankenstein running from a mob and bumps into Dracula, also running from a mob from the opposite direction. Mummies, Frankenstein, Dracula, skeletons, undead zombies, aliens looking for directions... plus Arnold dressed as the Terminator and Elvis.

Tell Me Something
A wonderful story told in a similar way to a silent film - the only dialogue being panels dedicated to the text.

A pickpocketer finds a picture of his old lover in the wallet of a victim. We get flashbacks of their time together as he goes to rekindle the relationship. It's a lighthearted heartfelt comedy with some tragedy thrown in - reminds me in a lot of ways of a Chaplin film.

You Can't Get There from Here
Continuing Jason's thematic obsession with movie monsters.

We have a mad scientist creating a bride for his monster. Two old assistants chat with each other in a Denny's to complain about the mad scientists they work for. One talks about wanting to be in a relationship - but imagining a woman being in to him is like science fiction.

There's some pretty comedic romantic twists going on as the mad scientist falls for the bride and tries to replace her with another woman.

The Living and the Dead
A lonely dishwasher slowly saves up money to hire a prostitute. On the day he's finally saved up... there's a zombie apocalypse! Told silently, it's a weird romantic story that's hard not to love.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jason is a minimalist graphic novelist - usually bold black and whites. Occasionally another color or two. But always sharp contrasts.

The stories in here are hard to follow at times. I've heard people complain about the names in Russian literature, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In a way, this was like the graphic novel version of that. (I hate it when people say that, by the way. And I hate myself for pointing out this graphic novel equivalent.)

Even though the stories were hard to follow, there were pieces - single panels, sometimes two or three pages at a time - that were just weird and great. Sections that made you sit and think for a minute.

I'm not really qualified to review graphic novels. Or really anything. But that's the great part about a site like goodreads, and what keeps me coming back.

[Steve Moudry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost Silent by Jason collects four of Jason's "quieter" pieces. This volume is full of some of his short strips focused, in the vain of Charles Addams, on horror and monsters. The usual mix of sadness, humor, and intrigue makes this one stand out. I have read The Living and The Dead before so it was a nice treat to revisit that one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four weird and hilarious genre mashup satires by Jason. This stuff is well drawn silly fun. Definitely check out one of his books if you haven't.

[Goatboy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the concepts and thought behind the stories, but I have to admit that overall they felt empty to me - as if the ideas plus plots hoped they would equal story but never quite got there...

[Ray Nessly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four graphic novels, all available separately. Two of them I'd already read very recently, so I didn't reread those, but copy pasted my reviews.

Meow, Baby. (Already read, in Jan. 2022.) 4 stars. Quite liked this collection of b/w stories by Norwegian cartoonist Jason (John Arne Sæterøy). Most of the stories are only a few pages, with one longer piece (The Mummy's Secret). The collection wraps up with about fifteen pages of very short (3 panel) cartoons. Recurring characters include Elvis, cavemen, an alien, wolf man, a mummy and various zombies, skeletons ... ie, your assorted walking undead. Mostly sight gags, slapstick, and often delightfully odd and/or surreal. One or two I'm not sure I "got", but hey that's okay, because I found it pretty consistently amusing. Especially liked the wolf man, always finding himself transforming at inopportune moments. Like say, when meeting his lady friend's parents.

The Living and the Dead. (Already read, in Jan. 2022) 3.5 stars
Pretty cool graphic novel/short story by Norwegian cartoonist Jason (John Arne Sæterøy). Considering that I generally have zero interest in zombie stuff, I liked this much more than I thought I would. (Saw Night of the Living Dead when it came out, and that was plenty for me.) Nearly wordless, what little dialogue is presented, ala silent movies, on black panels with white lettering. Sweet ending, or as sweet as you can get with zombies anyway. Judging by the cars, it seems to be set in the 20's or 30's.

Tell Me Something. 3 stars. Not one of Jason's best, but still entertaining. Very nice b/w art, nearly silent, with some dialogue on black "cards" ala silent films. The early 20th century setting adds to the silent fim-like effect.

You Can't Get There From Here. 4 stars. Such a great title. A riff on Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Three color art. There's actually some dialogue in this one, between the two "Igor"-like assistants to the scientist, you know, the guys who do all the dirty work like digging up graves ,hauling jars of brains, etc. Their casual patter on coffee breaks is pretty funny. Particularly loved their silent nonchalance as angry "villagers" run outside their window, bearing the usual pitchforks and flaming torches.

[Sylvia Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jason is a poet in the medium of comics. He possesses an articulate and deep knowledge of how to draw a streamlined page, allowing our eyes to glide from panel to panel effortlessly. This collection is focused on stories of his that feature little to no dialogue, allowing Jason to show off his skill in relying on strong visuals and cleverly placed motifs, as well as letting the reader soak in the artwork even more than usual.

His work is easy to get lost in, as I usually read each of them in one sitting, Almost Silent being the exception due to circumstance. “You Can’t Get There From Here” was probably my favorite from this collection, although I really enjoyed every story. I also deeply enjoyed the first half of the collection is fluid set of one-page comics that build a loose story, but serve as complete stand-alone pieces.

With a stronger emphasis on visual storytelling and a deeper focus on art, this makes for Jason’s quietest work yet. However, the style, humor, drama, and humanity remain. If you enjoy his work, you’re sure to love Almost Silent.

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially I was a bit skeptical of this since there’s very little dialogue. For the most part it was very entertaining.

The Living And The Dead was my favorite of the longer stories. It being the final story in the book was a nice conclusion.

As far as the short strips I thing I liked the ones with the mummy the best. They just always made my smile.

I wouldn’t say this is one of my favorite Jason books, but I still enjoyed it.

[Ben Swanney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A combination of four Stories written by Jason, this mostly wordless graphic novel is a must read for all who are looking for a laugh, to be enveloped in a million different storylines, or to simply read a satirical outlook on life. Taking place in a city, there are many characters looked at in these stories. The zombies and skeletons are feared by the city people, but as this book shows, they are just doing their jobs. In the storyline "You can't Get There From Here" Frankenstein's monster, his bride, and what looks like Dr. Frankenstein himself are in a love triangle, and although the dialogue in the story is restricted to Dr. Frankenstein and a colleague, the story plays out very clearly. 5/5

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gonna stick with Jason's dialogue books next time, apart from the strips this collection seemed like it lacked emotion. As another reviewer said, "Almost Silent" manages to portray how important words are in Jason's works by almost not having any,.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started reading this 3 years ago and put it on the shelf because I didn’t think I was in the mood for it. It turns out I just don’t like these comics. Marketed as edgy I just found them dull

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of four shorter books by Norwegian cartoonist, Jason.

The first book consists of mostly shorter pieces - generally from a few panels to a few pages. These were the weakest in the book I thought. In some ways Jason's style is best suited to short strips, but for some reason the longer pieces seem to work much better.

The second piece in the book is the best in my opinion. It's a hard-boiled love story - featuring Jason's funny animals, obviously. This had the most narrative depth and characterisation. Not vast amounts, but what's there is very effective. Interestingly, similar to Shiga's Empire State Jason uses different page colours to indicate what bits are flashback.

The third is a monster story with a lot of humanity. Essentially a reinterpretation of Frankenstein story archetypes. I liked this one a lot too.

The fourth is a love story with zombies. Quite fun, but a little repetitive.

A good but somewhat uneven book. 3 stars is a little ungenerous - certainly the middle parts were worth more - but better to be pleasantly surprised.

[Michał Jerzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meow, Baby!: 4/5
Tell Me Something: 4/5
You Can't Get There from Here: 4/5
The Living and the Dead: 4/5

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find myself missing Jason's dialogue. Though he is excellent at expression emotions and depicting plot without words, th e stories themselves are not as snappy snappy entertaining. I like the stories here with longer plots. The Frankenstein story of You Can't Get There From Here was a nice twist, though the implied sexual violence (which is difficult to remedy without dialogue giving context that might convince me otherwise) was not good. The zombie story, The Living and the Dead, was my favourite. I'm a sucker for a fun zombies plot!

[Erik Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but only recommendable if you know you already like Jason's stuff. I do and yet it wasn't as good as The Last Musketeer or I Killed Adolph Hitler. But for the record, nothin will ever top Hey, Wait...

[Kenya Starflight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jason has become one of my favorite graphic novelists, ever since I stumbled upon the comic I Killed Adolf Hitler. His stories are offbeat, often deeply emotional and melancholy, and combined with a simple yet quirky art style. "Almost Silent" is a collection of shorter stories and gag-a-day strips, showcasing his weird and macabre humor, common themes in his work, and funky art style.

"Meow, Baby!" is a collection of short stories and one-shot gags, featuring mummies, zombies, aliens, vampires, cavemen, Frankenstein's monster, Elvis (yes, really), and other B-movie creatures as they go about their daily lives. "You Can't Get There From Here" features an unlikely love triangle between a mad scientist, Frankenstein's monster, and the Bride of Frankenstein. "Tell Me Something" is a near-silent (hence the collection's title, "Almost Silent") story of love lost, found, and imperiled as two lives entwine in unlikely ways. And "The Living and the Dead" is a Romero-style zombie story with surprisingly emotional moments.

Jason's art style takes some getting used to -- the poses are often stiff and awkward, and the blank-eyed animal characters have little emotional range in their expressions. But there's something charming and quirky about it, and the art is able to say a lot using a little detail. Be warned -- despite having anthropomorphic cartoon animals as characters, this is NOT a graphic novel for children. Jason is not shy about depicting graphic violence, nudity, and sexual material in his work, and most of these stories are aimed at older audiences anyhow.

The stories and gag strips range the gamut from funny to morbid to shocking to sad, and often a combination of the above. Jason has a knack for giving monstrous creatures very human emotions, and finding the humanity and heart in otherwise fantastic situations. His love of B-movie horror and sci-fi shows through, but that's not all bad and in fact adds to the quirky charm of this work.

"Almost Silent" is an excellent collection of Jason's work, including a few of his graphic novels that have since fallen out of print. It's also a good starting-off point for newcomers to Jason's body of work.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost silent is a graphic novel that contains four Jason’s books: Meow, baby, tell me something, you can’t get from here and the living and the dead. Unlike many other comic books out there, this book is basically all black and white except one chapter, even though the pictures and illustrations still look quite good and interesting, it would’ve been better if more stories and chapters was coloured. Another part where this stands out is the lack of dialogue, dozens of pages often goes without any words, just pictures. This definitely made the book easier to read and shorter, but the book also conveyed the content and the plot quite well without words. I liked the fact that there are a lot of action scenes in this book and the plot is humorous and quite easy to understand. Most of the jokes in this book are dark or slightly inappropriate humour, while most are funny and enjoyable, this is definitely not a comic book for children. One of the letdowns of the book for me is the amount of characters and how they appear in completely different plots, this confused me a lot while I was reading the book, it probably would not have been a problem if I reread the book again, but many of the characters appear too similar and this is definitely one of the areas that would’ve improved with the addition of colour.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the aptly-named Almost Silent, Fantagraphics collects four of Norwegian cartoonist Jason's (mostly) black and white books, with The Living and the Dead - a love story set in the zombie apocalypse - my favorite. Like the crime melodrama Tell Me Something, it uses silent film dialog cards (sparingly), but its narrative is clearer and more entertaining. The Frankenstein romance You Can't Get There From Here funnier, but it's always shocking to me when Jason goes for full-on word balloons. The book prefaces these three "novellas" with Meow, Baby!, a collection of shorter strips (between a few pages and newspaper strips) and shows the wider breadth of his character work - dog and bird versions of mummies, werewolves, aliens, skeletons, cavemen, Elvis still alive... This is fun October fare. I used to draw strips for my school newspapers - nothing so polished as Jason's - so I can appreciate the short-form storytelling and the cartooning syntax of repeated gags. These could have been in your local newspaper, give or take the occasional nudity. These is fairly early material - between 2004 and 2007 - so I'm keen to discover his more mature work in the future.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I might have enjoyed this more if it was the first book I read by Jason. I read Low Moon not long ago and I love it, but this one is more of a mixed bag. The first half of the collection is just filled with the earliest strips. They range between one page and a few panels. The one page strips are fun, but a bit of a letdown when you are expecting some kind of story. They are funny.

There are stories though: "You Can't Get There from Here" and "Tell Me Something" are very interesting, but I couldn't keep track of the different characters. This confusion kind of took away from the stories. If I read them a couple more times, they will probably make more sense.

The standout in the collection is "The Living and the Dead." Story is not confusing at all and I don't think many artists can pull off a love story with a zombie apocalypse as well as Jason has.

[Just a Girl Fighting Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skeletons, zombies, vampires, werewolves, Elvis, and Frankenstein's monster.

This was really fun, although due to the art style, very minimal and black and white, and lack of exposition (or words in general) it can sometimes boarder on confusing if you aren't taking your time.

Jason's shorter gags were my favorite part, although the Igor-esque guys chatting over a meal in "You Can't Get There From Here" was delightfully clever.

[Jake Nap · Rating 4 out of 5]

As my second book from Jason, I’m not disappointed. This collection of mostly silent comics are entertaining, funny and well executed. I really like Jason’s layouts, they compliment the silent gimmick of the book really well by giving each page this certain flow to it. His storytelling for the most part is great, it was at a few times though, hard to follow.

8/10

[Sayantan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part 'meow baby' is the reason for the 3 stars, else liked the rest, 'tell me something', 'you can't get there from here' and 'the living and the dead' enough for a 4 star.

A bit difficult to follow without dialogs (esp, you can't get there from here), and might need a reread, but then without dialogs, the rereads are gonna be fast.

[Jason Holtzman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think a lot of this book just flew over my head is all. I’m not super familiar with Jason’s work — this is only the second book of his I’ve read, but the majority of it just didn’t land. Some parts were funny, some parts lacked cohesion, and one particular story here I personally found to be in poor taste. I’ve got one more book of his to read at the moment so I’ll see how that goes.

[Melissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Living and the Dead is the reason I wanted to read this and it was definitely my favorite of these, some of the 3 panel comics in You Can't Get There From Here were fine, but just mostly, absolutely no thank you.

[Joshua Sloan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found "Tell Me Something" and "You Can't Get There from Here" to be the strongest segments.

[Cyborg]

Jason makes great gag oriented wordless (mostly) comics with werewolves and vampires and zombies etc. Just a good collection by him.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fun and funny collection of gag strips and two short stories.

[edmondegreen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly pretty great, just went on a bit too long.