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Heaven No Hell
In the past ten years, Michael DeForge has released eleven books. While his style and approach have evolved, he has never wavered from taut character studies and incisive social commentary with a focus on humor. He has deeply probed subjects like identity, gentrification, fame, and sexual desire.
In “No Hell,” an angel’s tour of the five tiers of heaven reveals her obsession with a haunting infidelity. In “Raising,” a couple uses an app to see what their unborn child would look like. Of course, what begins as a simple face-melding experiment becomes a nightmare of too-much-information where the young couple is forced to confront their terrible choices.
“Recommended for You” is an anxious retelling of our narrator’s favorite TV show—a Purge-like societal collapse drama—as a reflection of our desire for meaning in pop culture. Each of these stories shows the inner turmoil of an ordinary person coming to grips with a world vastly different than their initial perception of it. The humor is searing and the emotional weight lingers long after the story ends.
Heaven No Hell collects DeForge’s best work yet. His ability to dig into a subject and break it down with beautiful drawings and sharp writing makes him one of the finest short story writers of the past decade, in comics or beyond. Heaven No Hell is always funny, sometimes sad, and continuously innovative in its deconstruction of society.
In “No Hell,” an angel’s tour of the five tiers of heaven reveals her obsession with a haunting infidelity. In “Raising,” a couple uses an app to see what their unborn child would look like. Of course, what begins as a simple face-melding experiment becomes a nightmare of too-much-information where the young couple is forced to confront their terrible choices.
“Recommended for You” is an anxious retelling of our narrator’s favorite TV show—a Purge-like societal collapse drama—as a reflection of our desire for meaning in pop culture. Each of these stories shows the inner turmoil of an ordinary person coming to grips with a world vastly different than their initial perception of it. The humor is searing and the emotional weight lingers long after the story ends.
Heaven No Hell collects DeForge’s best work yet. His ability to dig into a subject and break it down with beautiful drawings and sharp writing makes him one of the finest short story writers of the past decade, in comics or beyond. Heaven No Hell is always funny, sometimes sad, and continuously innovative in its deconstruction of society.
228 pages, Hardcover
First published March 23, 2021
39 people are currently reading
1186 people want to read
About the author
Michael DeForge
69 books421 followersMichael DeForge lives in Toronto, Ontario. His comics and illustrations have been featured in Jacobin, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Believer, The Walrus and Maisonneuve Magazine. He worked as a designer on Adventure Time for six seasons. His published books include Very Casual, A Body Beneath, Ant Colony, First Year Healthy, Dressing, Big Kids, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero and A Western World.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 153 reviews
September 6, 2021
Several years ago I was hoping to see what the short form online comix guy Michael DeForge would do if he had a story to tell, in long form, a graphic novel, but after reading this, certainly one of the best graphic collections of the year, but a new collection of shorts, I am frankly not sure what is his best format. Keep ‘em guessing, looks like. Or, just say that DeForge can do a range of things very, very well. This is a great display of a range of what he can do, one of the best comics works of the year.
Michael DeForge is one of the smartest, funniest, most creative, the most resistant to categorization, working in comics today. One thing he does is play with narrative; he’s postmodern in that respect, messing with our expectations. But he’s always done that, with his weird, creepy, amoeba-like anthropomorphic blobby characters. In this collection he includes kid stories, sort of spinoffs from his Adventureland work, and he creates non-stories masking as stories. These are art comics, alt-comix, experimental, messing with various genres, work with a certain expressive vitality. There’s horror, dystopian, children’s stories, sci fi, and many bizarre places in between. Though this somehow seems more accessible to me than some of his early work, less violent and profane and that's a good thing. Is DeForge becoming more domestic, more conventional, more coherent? Dunno… But there’s humor throughout.
Some examples:
“Roleplay” is about a person masquerading as a surgeon. But everyone in this story seems to be roleplaying--a cop who seems to be arresting her after a family accuses her of killing their family member. .
“Of all the professions to impersonate, why did I choose ‘surgeon’?”
But hey, you have to get over that self-doubt, girl. She kills someone in surgery and coolly comments:
“They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Funny and chilling. Call it black humor/horror and it works.
“No Hell” asserts there is no Hell, but several levels of Heaven that you can earn your way to. Quirky and funny.
“One of my Students is a Murderer. . . But Which?” is a fairly straightforward (for DeForge, anyway) kid story about an FBI detective who becomes a substitute teacher to figure out who is the murderer in an elementary classroom. A children's crime story--that genre, this time--played for laughs. There are other kid level pieces in here, too, though they are weird, for weird kids:
“My Step-Dad is a Disgusting Bug: And I Hate Him” will be an insect-phobic’s worst nightmare.
One short features a person beginning to ask what kind of food they want to eat--Polish? Mexican?--and moves to other questions, some of them absurd, the whole piece and the whole relationship is conducted in q and a--June Wedding? New Bedding? And so on.
“Soap Opera” is a wild shaggy-dog story about--ostensibly--a failing marriage, that goes all the way to the US Presidency. . . .
So it’s a fun ride exploring various ways to tell a story, in weird images and through minimalism/surrealism, anything but realism. Worth your while to check out!
Michael DeForge is one of the smartest, funniest, most creative, the most resistant to categorization, working in comics today. One thing he does is play with narrative; he’s postmodern in that respect, messing with our expectations. But he’s always done that, with his weird, creepy, amoeba-like anthropomorphic blobby characters. In this collection he includes kid stories, sort of spinoffs from his Adventureland work, and he creates non-stories masking as stories. These are art comics, alt-comix, experimental, messing with various genres, work with a certain expressive vitality. There’s horror, dystopian, children’s stories, sci fi, and many bizarre places in between. Though this somehow seems more accessible to me than some of his early work, less violent and profane and that's a good thing. Is DeForge becoming more domestic, more conventional, more coherent? Dunno… But there’s humor throughout.
Some examples:
“Roleplay” is about a person masquerading as a surgeon. But everyone in this story seems to be roleplaying--a cop who seems to be arresting her after a family accuses her of killing their family member. .
“Of all the professions to impersonate, why did I choose ‘surgeon’?”
But hey, you have to get over that self-doubt, girl. She kills someone in surgery and coolly comments:
“They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Funny and chilling. Call it black humor/horror and it works.
“No Hell” asserts there is no Hell, but several levels of Heaven that you can earn your way to. Quirky and funny.
“One of my Students is a Murderer. . . But Which?” is a fairly straightforward (for DeForge, anyway) kid story about an FBI detective who becomes a substitute teacher to figure out who is the murderer in an elementary classroom. A children's crime story--that genre, this time--played for laughs. There are other kid level pieces in here, too, though they are weird, for weird kids:
“My Step-Dad is a Disgusting Bug: And I Hate Him” will be an insect-phobic’s worst nightmare.
One short features a person beginning to ask what kind of food they want to eat--Polish? Mexican?--and moves to other questions, some of them absurd, the whole piece and the whole relationship is conducted in q and a--June Wedding? New Bedding? And so on.
“Soap Opera” is a wild shaggy-dog story about--ostensibly--a failing marriage, that goes all the way to the US Presidency. . . .
So it’s a fun ride exploring various ways to tell a story, in weird images and through minimalism/surrealism, anything but realism. Worth your while to check out!
December 12, 2021
I find DeForge's work to be consistently interesting, even though not all of it works for me. This collection of short pieces is not surprisingly uneven.
After the initial two stories, I was just about ready to give 4 stars. The proto-scifi "Roleplay" is so sharp and surprising; "No Hell" is a kind of absurd ecclesiastical tract. Then we hit a more rocky stretch. But we do get the deadpan black humor of "One of My Students is a Murderer... But Which?", and the surreal family meditation "My New Stepdad is a Disgusting Bug, and I Hate Him". (If those titles don't encourage you to run out and buy a copy of this, I don't know what will.) Then there's the deft world-building and gentle political ruminations of "New Museum", complete with surreal cubist graphics.
The last story, "Soap Opera", is classic DeForge. The protagonist shares his repeated absurd speculations, wayward romantic entanglements, and elaborate destructive schemes. These psychopathic ruminations are illustrated with DeForge's trademark fluid forms and subtle detailing, and a relentless deadpan black humor. Somehow he gets all this to work. I can't wait for his next book.
After the initial two stories, I was just about ready to give 4 stars. The proto-scifi "Roleplay" is so sharp and surprising; "No Hell" is a kind of absurd ecclesiastical tract. Then we hit a more rocky stretch. But we do get the deadpan black humor of "One of My Students is a Murderer... But Which?", and the surreal family meditation "My New Stepdad is a Disgusting Bug, and I Hate Him". (If those titles don't encourage you to run out and buy a copy of this, I don't know what will.) Then there's the deft world-building and gentle political ruminations of "New Museum", complete with surreal cubist graphics.
The last story, "Soap Opera", is classic DeForge. The protagonist shares his repeated absurd speculations, wayward romantic entanglements, and elaborate destructive schemes. These psychopathic ruminations are illustrated with DeForge's trademark fluid forms and subtle detailing, and a relentless deadpan black humor. Somehow he gets all this to work. I can't wait for his next book.
April 13, 2021
Every heartbreaking moment I’ve ever experiencedI’ve laughed about either directly in the moment or immediately after. This is kind of like that.
April 5, 2021
I love Michael Deforge!!!!!!! A hilarious and surreal and sneakily dark blend of straightforward narrative comics and more abstract exploratory ones. All of them are wonderful but I’m especially in love with One Of My Students Is A Murderer... But Which?, Kid Mafia (extremely sweet), and Roleplaying. My favorite comic artist workin’ today!
May 8, 2021
what can i say? he's got a point; he's an icon, he's a legend, and he is the moment
August 29, 2025
Heaven No Hell is a wealth of weird – confoundingly, brilliantly, winningly weird; politically charged, norm-challenging, and form-bendingly weird. I don't normally do well with graphic novels, but the brilliance with which Michael De Forge experiments with art styles, varies his tonal register, and out-absurds his storytelling here kept me well hooked.
In "Roleplay", a woman impersonating a surgeon realises that the world is full of people playing pretend. "No Hell" takes us through several degrees of heaven, each quirkier than the one before. "Recommended for you" uses a fictional 'purge' to throw our real, current state of affairs into sharp relief. One story sees class of schoolchildren objecting to and refusing to co-operate with a FBI investigation, while in yet another, the reasonable ('the pragmatic, the sensible, the even-handed, the fence-sitting, the well-wishing') are delivered a decisive and utopian defeat at the hands of the unreasonable ('the depressive, the hysterical, the exuberant, the miserable, the terrified, the obsessive, the delusional'). In "Raised", a couple goes through the many ways their choices, both concrete and wishful, shape their imagined child; "Soap Opera" takes a man from the verge of being dumped by his wife to the next new thing until he is – naturally – at the post of President of the United States.
In "Roleplay", a woman impersonating a surgeon realises that the world is full of people playing pretend. "No Hell" takes us through several degrees of heaven, each quirkier than the one before. "Recommended for you" uses a fictional 'purge' to throw our real, current state of affairs into sharp relief. One story sees class of schoolchildren objecting to and refusing to co-operate with a FBI investigation, while in yet another, the reasonable ('the pragmatic, the sensible, the even-handed, the fence-sitting, the well-wishing') are delivered a decisive and utopian defeat at the hands of the unreasonable ('the depressive, the hysterical, the exuberant, the miserable, the terrified, the obsessive, the delusional'). In "Raised", a couple goes through the many ways their choices, both concrete and wishful, shape their imagined child; "Soap Opera" takes a man from the verge of being dumped by his wife to the next new thing until he is – naturally – at the post of President of the United States.
In these stories and the others, DeForge deploys humour and some truly madcap premises to question the present moment and attempt to deconstruct our hostile, unnavigable, absurd reality. I can't help but think of him as the Mark Fisher of the graphic novel format, and look forward to testing this hypothesis further when I get my hands on a copy of Familiar Face.
September 29, 2021
Are his stories becoming more cohesive, or are we getting better at reading them, or is it a combo?
These seemed funnier too!
These seemed funnier too!
January 18, 2024
Short witty stories basically doing a victory lap of all the various style DeForge has become known for. I wasn't as blown away while re-reading these. Most seem to be weird for weirdness sake and a few were pretty boring.
The best story is the first one about a woman roleplaying as a surgeon. She gets called out and a cop arrests her - but he's also just roleplaying as a police officer!
The best story is the first one about a woman roleplaying as a surgeon. She gets called out and a cop arrests her - but he's also just roleplaying as a police officer!
April 30, 2021
En tredjedel var riktigt bra och on point (roleplay, no hell, my darling astronaut, album). Två tredjedelar lite slappt och trist. Jämfört med annat inom genren grafisk roman är det en solklar fyra, men jämfört med deforge hela oeuvre är det en trea!
February 5, 2022
I haven't finished a Michael DeForge book before, so this was a good gateway for me. This collection of short comics ranges subjects and styles, though they are all interesting explorations of some aspect of our contemporary western social landscape. Plus, alot of them are tripped the f out. I didn't enjoy them all, but my faves were: Role Play, Recommended For You, One of my Students is a Murderer, and Song Selection
May 11, 2021
what I admire about deforge is despite how different his work becomes, you still know it's his
my new stepdad is a disgusting bug and I hate him was a personal favourite
my new stepdad is a disgusting bug and I hate him was a personal favourite
July 15, 2021
If I give a Michael DeForge book less than five stars I have been HACKED!!! The art and the writing in these is so incredibly top notch I cannot believe. My favorites are "Surprise Party" and "One of My Students is a Murderer...But Which?" with honorable mention to "My New Stepdad is a Disgusting Bug, and I Hate Him."
January 6, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this book. It’s a collection of graphic short stories that are all so absurd it’s almost like they either work for you.. or they don’t. But yeah! I liked this overall.
April 11, 2023
I found this dull and uninteresting. The artwork isn’t too bad but the stories are utterly boring.
May 9, 2023
This is a graphic novel. Oh no i am cheating on my reading challenge again. WHOS gonna stop me. Anyway it is the best graphic novel and such a lovely book to possess. I want to adapt multiple of these short stories. Thank you eloise for the rec/discovering initially
May 5, 2021
if angels could talk it would probably be in the form of #MichaelDeForge's art. literally no one does it like him and no one should even try.
every first page of each comic in this collection is intimidating cause you wouldn't know what to expect and how to approach them. he renders in the strangest but at the same time most rational ways. he would draw a person's ribcage in the shape of an asterisk and instead of questioning it you'd think "of course that's how it should be!" so even though they are initially intimidating you'd immediately understand what he's trying to tell. his illustrations appeal not just to the eyes but the wild yet simplistic logical circuitries our minds make when forming meanings.
the stories are also very creative: pulling you out of your comfort zone sometimes in quick tiny yanks, or in some extremely beyond your expectations. but like the art, it all makes total sense. some are clearly influenced if not direct analogies of current sociopolitical topics, but always with an original take.
i understand how uncomfortable some would be coming in contact with his comics but you gotta trust that he is an excellent writer and artist who really knows what he's doing.
this book is honestly perfect both in content and as a physical thing. the bound is sturdy, the paper quality, the colors, the texture. all fine and pretty.
every first page of each comic in this collection is intimidating cause you wouldn't know what to expect and how to approach them. he renders in the strangest but at the same time most rational ways. he would draw a person's ribcage in the shape of an asterisk and instead of questioning it you'd think "of course that's how it should be!" so even though they are initially intimidating you'd immediately understand what he's trying to tell. his illustrations appeal not just to the eyes but the wild yet simplistic logical circuitries our minds make when forming meanings.
the stories are also very creative: pulling you out of your comfort zone sometimes in quick tiny yanks, or in some extremely beyond your expectations. but like the art, it all makes total sense. some are clearly influenced if not direct analogies of current sociopolitical topics, but always with an original take.
i understand how uncomfortable some would be coming in contact with his comics but you gotta trust that he is an excellent writer and artist who really knows what he's doing.
this book is honestly perfect both in content and as a physical thing. the bound is sturdy, the paper quality, the colors, the texture. all fine and pretty.
May 27, 2021
DeForge is firing on all cylinders with this collection. Each story shows one part of DeForge's unique style and all are great.
January 4, 2024
Coasting on old energy. The art is still fantastic, but the stories are on the wrong side of the line between confoundingly strange and wonderfully strange.
December 31, 2021
Przy pierwszym kontakcie z "Heaven No Hell" jest wrażenie większej ostrożności czy nawet zachowawczości w stosunku do innych tego typu publikacji, zbierających w większą całość krótsze formy popełnione przez DeForge. To bardzo złudne. Być może autor bardziej się hamuje co do wizualnych odjazdów, ale gdy przejrzysz tematy i uświadomisz sobie poziom abstrakcji tych opowieści, zobaczysz, że nic się nie zmieniło. Już otwierający "Roleplay" zachwyca pomysłem. Wizja społeczeństwa, w którym każdy udaje kogoś kim nie jest, by robić to co lubi, jest równie fascynująca co przerażająca. Podobnie przerażająca - choć zabawna - jest "Raised", w której czytelnik śledzi proces wybierania przez rodziców wyglądu, charakteru i przyszłości własnego dziecka. Decydują detale ustawiane w aplikacji. Z kolei w lekkim "Boyfriend" bohater z powodu nieograniczonych możliwości, nie może się na nic zdecydować. W końcu udaje mu się zbudować pojazd, który jest w stanie zaprowadzić go do dowolnego miejsca na świecie, lecz co z tego, skoro nawet wtedy nie jest decyzyjny. Tak to właśnie wygląda u autora "Big Kids" i za to go cenię najbardziej. Pod płaszczykiem kompletnych odjazdów i prezentacji szalonych możliwości medium, zawsze kryje się jakaś diagnoza społeczeństwa, które zaczyna zmierzać w dziwnych kierunkach. A nawet jeśli jakaś opowieść zdaje się funkcjonować bez tego podtekstu, czytanie DeForge pozostaje czystą przyjemnością, wynikającą z obserwacji kolejnych szalonych wytworów wyobraźni autora. Mistrz
January 6, 2023
what a great read to start the new year!!! it was quick, funny, lowkey profound, and the illustrations were very stimulating !! it’s a graphic novel (recommended to me by claire arnold shoutout) filled with several short stories(/comics). each was so different and odd and original and interesting, i felt fulfilled by the end of each story and excited for the next! and the illustrations were so fucking neat and unique for each story, i found myself just staring at pages after reading because i wanted to take it all in. definitely recommend for something short and easy and fun and thought provoking.
October 3, 2022
first graphic novel i’d read in awhile and absolutely blew me away!!!! thoughtful, silly, dark, tender all at once. if you’re a fan of midnight gospel or adventure time this would absolutely be for you. some of the stories felt plucked right out of my own dreams 10/10 on my way to purchase my own copy to reread
August 30, 2021
I've been a fan of this artist for a while. DeForge creates surrealist landscapes that combine bizarre little stories with abstract imagery. It's not for everyone, but if it's for you, you'll know within the first few pages.
May 22, 2021
Another killer collection from DeForge, he really excels at the short form where he can truly indulge all his experimental impulses, great stuff.
July 8, 2021
Michael Deforge. À la fois productif, et constant dans la qualité et le psychédélisme.
July 11, 2021
One of the funniest graphic novels I’ve ever read
July 26, 2021
just amazing
March 3, 2022
Experimenting with form and style, but within my feeble comics reading power, with interesting choices and execution. But best of all, really weirdly funny. I really enjoyed this one more than I thought I would.
August 26, 2022
Ridiculous and wonderful.
December 25, 2022
Beautiful illustrations; queer anti-cop characters; a short story at the end that had me laughing out loud :) some of the stories didn’t make an impact on me, but most did. A fun read!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 153 reviews