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Upside Dawn
In this absolutely bonkers comics collection, Norwegian cartoonist Jason follows his most oddball impulses, presenting to readers an intergalactic assortment of his weirdest, wildest short stories yet. A dinner date devolves into a Dadaist farce. Death decides his victim's fate over a high-stakes game of chess. Kafka is ensnared in a confounding bureaucracy of his own imagination. Spock beams down to 1920s Paris to live a double life as an avant-garde painter. Hitchcockian thrillers, literary adaptations, and homages to classic EC comics abound. Dinosaurs! David Bowie! Vampires! Elvis! Welcome to the cosmic gumbo of Upside Dawn . Norwegian cartoonist Jason is beloved for his signature dry wit, deadpan humor, and elegantly minimalist style. His newest compilation of short comics stories leans into the playful and experimental, as he mixes and matches genres, mashes up low and high brow culture, from Star Trek to Georges Perec, and leads readers through dizzying twists and turns ― in sum, a beguiling collection for both stalwart Jason fans and the blissfully uninitiated. Black-and-white with some color
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 21, 2022
2 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Jason
115 books706 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 - 30 of 55 reviews
November 29, 2022
Norwegian cartoonist Jason’s back with a new short comics anthology, Upside Dawn, and continuing the unfortunate trend started last year with the lacklustre Good Night, Hem, it’s also not very good - and he normally does short comics so well!
There’s quite a few stories here (over 20 if you count the really short comics in the end section titled Etc.) but I found only three to be any good.
The City of Light, Forever is a Star Trek parody where Kirk and Spock time travel to 1920s Paris where Spock falls in love with the era/lifestyle. It’s a cute mashup of pop culture and history that Jason does so well.
Seal VII is a comedic take on The Seventh Seal where Death plays a Knight for his life - except this Knight doesn’t know how to play chess! Ulysses is a reimagining of the James Joyce classic by way of Grindhouse cinema, sexed up with guns and treasure huntin’, which was amusing.
The majority of the stories are either references to artists/works I haven’t experienced so didn’t get, or I did get them but didn’t find them entertaining. Woman, Man, Bird is an abstract take on a date, which might reference some famous movie? Perec, PI - is this Georges Perec, the French writer? Dunno. I liked that it was told where each sentence was cut off mid-sentence, yet the story was still understandable (mostly because it was a generic noir story). Probably a reference to Perec’s stuff? Ionesco is a documentary-style story about… Ionesco, whoever they are? I’m guessing the style of the comic is in the vein of their work or something?
The Prisoner in the Castle mashes up Kafka the writer and the 1960s The Prisoner TV show because two kooky things supposedly taste great together? Crime and Punishment is a succinct summary of the novel - I think anyway as I’ve never read it. Nor do I think I will if the summary is accurate - phew, what a boring load of bollocks! And the comic itself is also very dull as a result.
EC Come… and …EC Go are parodies of old EC Comics-style stories, one about a magician who murders his assistant, and another where space adventurers encounter a weird planet. I’ve read some EC Comics reprints but they’re not great so Jason basically replicating that doesn’t make for amazing comics either.
The others are forgettable dross - a vampire story, a time travel story, a kid’s story, more abstract rubbish, and then the book closes out with fanservice shorts where characters from previous books cameo, like recurring character Athos, the Mummy and Elvis from Meow, Baby! and the werewolf from Werewolves of Montpellier. Nothing remarkable about any of it unless you get excited about easter egg spotting, and why would anyone?
Jason is one of my favourite cartoonists and I look forward to all of his books but Upside Dawn is a very weak collection of forgettable and surprisingly crap, half-baked short comics. He’s done this kind of thing before much better - if you’ve not read them, I highly recommend the books Pocket Full of Rain and Meow, Baby! instead.
There’s quite a few stories here (over 20 if you count the really short comics in the end section titled Etc.) but I found only three to be any good.
The City of Light, Forever is a Star Trek parody where Kirk and Spock time travel to 1920s Paris where Spock falls in love with the era/lifestyle. It’s a cute mashup of pop culture and history that Jason does so well.
Seal VII is a comedic take on The Seventh Seal where Death plays a Knight for his life - except this Knight doesn’t know how to play chess! Ulysses is a reimagining of the James Joyce classic by way of Grindhouse cinema, sexed up with guns and treasure huntin’, which was amusing.
The majority of the stories are either references to artists/works I haven’t experienced so didn’t get, or I did get them but didn’t find them entertaining. Woman, Man, Bird is an abstract take on a date, which might reference some famous movie? Perec, PI - is this Georges Perec, the French writer? Dunno. I liked that it was told where each sentence was cut off mid-sentence, yet the story was still understandable (mostly because it was a generic noir story). Probably a reference to Perec’s stuff? Ionesco is a documentary-style story about… Ionesco, whoever they are? I’m guessing the style of the comic is in the vein of their work or something?
The Prisoner in the Castle mashes up Kafka the writer and the 1960s The Prisoner TV show because two kooky things supposedly taste great together? Crime and Punishment is a succinct summary of the novel - I think anyway as I’ve never read it. Nor do I think I will if the summary is accurate - phew, what a boring load of bollocks! And the comic itself is also very dull as a result.
EC Come… and …EC Go are parodies of old EC Comics-style stories, one about a magician who murders his assistant, and another where space adventurers encounter a weird planet. I’ve read some EC Comics reprints but they’re not great so Jason basically replicating that doesn’t make for amazing comics either.
The others are forgettable dross - a vampire story, a time travel story, a kid’s story, more abstract rubbish, and then the book closes out with fanservice shorts where characters from previous books cameo, like recurring character Athos, the Mummy and Elvis from Meow, Baby! and the werewolf from Werewolves of Montpellier. Nothing remarkable about any of it unless you get excited about easter egg spotting, and why would anyone?
Jason is one of my favourite cartoonists and I look forward to all of his books but Upside Dawn is a very weak collection of forgettable and surprisingly crap, half-baked short comics. He’s done this kind of thing before much better - if you’ve not read them, I highly recommend the books Pocket Full of Rain and Meow, Baby! instead.
December 6, 2022
So when you have read almost all of (the genius) Jason’s comics, and mostly loved all of them, you are excited to see a new one, of course, and this 2022 collection of shorts had me interested. And hopeful that he would be taking me in a new direction. There’s more than 20 shorts and short-shorts here, so I won’t review all of them. But let’s see:
*“Man, Woman and Bird,” features a man and a woman on a first date making increasingly absurd small talk, with each of them becoming different familiar comics characters. That was new, and I liked it! Kind of commentary on dating. Oh, and at one point there seems to be a reference to the c collection title, as the man is upside down? So the man goes up, dismayed. A return to sad sack Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin territory with a side of surrealism. Very creative and cool and funny.
*“Perec, PI” continues Jason’s use of literary characters, this time focusing on Georges Perec, who was part of a group called Oulipo, a group of writers that challenged themselves to do formal experiments; for instance, Perec once wrote a novel without a single letter “e” in it. Why? Because! Jason here depicts Perec as a detective who tells his story in sentence fragments. Perec encounters a lot of dead bodies, but mostly as he narrates, he just mourns the loss of a relationship and ignores all the bodies. Just awesome.
*“I Remember” is a tribute to the wonderful memory book bu the same name by Joe Brainerd, a book full of sentences that only begin with that phrase. There are (or may be) loving, as in probably actual, memories, here, but it all descends to jokes: “I remember being too late for the Sermon on the Mount.” “I remember dinosaurs.” Funny!
*“Seal,” a satire based on Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal; as in the great film, the knight challenges Death to a game of chess. . . but in “Seal” the guy really doesn’t know how to play the game. . . funny.
*The Prisoner of the Castle, a send-up of Kafka’s novel; Crime and Punishment--a kind of novel summary, and Ulysses, eh, ok.I love this book but what does it tell us that is new (or funny) about these books?
*EC comics tributes were fun
Like Kate Beaton's Hark, A Vagrant or Tom Gauld’s Baking with Kafka, is (mostly) for lovers of literature, which was a plus for me. Some of the later stuff was just okay, but on the whole I still really liked it. Because: Jason, and his sweet goofy sensibilities and his amazing minimalist cartooning.
*“Man, Woman and Bird,” features a man and a woman on a first date making increasingly absurd small talk, with each of them becoming different familiar comics characters. That was new, and I liked it! Kind of commentary on dating. Oh, and at one point there seems to be a reference to the c collection title, as the man is upside down? So the man goes up, dismayed. A return to sad sack Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin territory with a side of surrealism. Very creative and cool and funny.
*“Perec, PI” continues Jason’s use of literary characters, this time focusing on Georges Perec, who was part of a group called Oulipo, a group of writers that challenged themselves to do formal experiments; for instance, Perec once wrote a novel without a single letter “e” in it. Why? Because! Jason here depicts Perec as a detective who tells his story in sentence fragments. Perec encounters a lot of dead bodies, but mostly as he narrates, he just mourns the loss of a relationship and ignores all the bodies. Just awesome.
*“I Remember” is a tribute to the wonderful memory book bu the same name by Joe Brainerd, a book full of sentences that only begin with that phrase. There are (or may be) loving, as in probably actual, memories, here, but it all descends to jokes: “I remember being too late for the Sermon on the Mount.” “I remember dinosaurs.” Funny!
*“Seal,” a satire based on Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal; as in the great film, the knight challenges Death to a game of chess. . . but in “Seal” the guy really doesn’t know how to play the game. . . funny.
*The Prisoner of the Castle, a send-up of Kafka’s novel; Crime and Punishment--a kind of novel summary, and Ulysses, eh, ok.I love this book but what does it tell us that is new (or funny) about these books?
*EC comics tributes were fun
Like Kate Beaton's Hark, A Vagrant or Tom Gauld’s Baking with Kafka, is (mostly) for lovers of literature, which was a plus for me. Some of the later stuff was just okay, but on the whole I still really liked it. Because: Jason, and his sweet goofy sensibilities and his amazing minimalist cartooning.
January 22, 2024
I wasn't sold on this one at first, a collection of short mostly humorous comics by Jason. I ended up giving it another read and enjoyed it much more the second time around. It's Jason so you're getting understated but quality cartooning all around. Much of the humour didn't quite land for me, but it was all enjoyable. I quite liked the EC comics homages, as I just read a whole ton of EC comics recently.
Nice for fans of Jason, always a treat to get more of his work. Here's hoping his next volume is a long form story though!
***
Rereading this I still thinks it one of the weakest Jason comics. Stuff like the Crime and Punishment adaptation are boring. A few of the experimental strips - like the noir story told with fractured sentences - really don't go anywhere.
Nice for fans of Jason, always a treat to get more of his work. Here's hoping his next volume is a long form story though!
***
Rereading this I still thinks it one of the weakest Jason comics. Stuff like the Crime and Punishment adaptation are boring. A few of the experimental strips - like the noir story told with fractured sentences - really don't go anywhere.
November 16, 2022
Personally, I think it's high time we stopped making the same Vincent van Gogh ear jokes over and over again.
February 13, 2023
This is a vaguely funny series of literary vignettes. Really enjoyed The City of Light, Forever—Spock living in France as an avant-garde painter would make for a great Trek episode!
Nothing much else is memorable, besides his summary of Crime and Punishment, which I haven't yet had the chance to read. But at least now I know what happens...?
Nothing much else is memorable, besides his summary of Crime and Punishment, which I haven't yet had the chance to read. But at least now I know what happens...?
December 1, 2022
One of Jason's stranger collections, this book was chock-full of odd little comics and was incredibly hard to put down. Even thought I didn't always understand the reference, the English major in me got so excited!
dnf
November 23, 2022there is nothing more banal in this world than a french comic strip
eta: MY BAD JASON ISN’T EVEN FRENCH THIS JUST BORES ME
eta: MY BAD JASON ISN’T EVEN FRENCH THIS JUST BORES ME
July 12, 2024
I always enjoy reading new Jason. His comics feel very singular. They are always a bit detached and awkward.
Upside Dawn is a collection of short stories Jason did in 2021. This collection is definitely the most experimental of anything I've read by him. Many of the stories felt intentionally nonsensical. I wouldn't say I had a bad time reading it I just didn't understand most of what was happening.
If you like Jason, it's not the worst and not a big time commitment but it's far from his finest. If you haven't read Jason before, there are many better places to start.
Upside Dawn is a collection of short stories Jason did in 2021. This collection is definitely the most experimental of anything I've read by him. Many of the stories felt intentionally nonsensical. I wouldn't say I had a bad time reading it I just didn't understand most of what was happening.
If you like Jason, it's not the worst and not a big time commitment but it's far from his finest. If you haven't read Jason before, there are many better places to start.
January 20, 2023
Sartre, Perec, Dostojewski, james Joyce, Star Trek, dino's, vampieren...niemand weet hoge en lage cultuur zo grappig met elkaar te verzoenen als de Noorse stripmaker Jason. Zijn verzamelingen korte strips zijn niet altijd 100 procent geslaagd, maar deze vond ik een van de betere.
February 23, 2023
This was an extremely odd graphic novel that I really didn't fully understand. The book is told in a series of "short stories" but many of them make almost no sense (at least to me!). There was one that made me chuckle at the end but the book lacked any sort of cohesion in terms of the stories that were chosen.
November 15, 2022
Jason returns with a collection of shorts that harness his staple deadpan, absurdist storytelling. Not all of the stories engrossed me, but most of them were funny at the very least. Jason's sparse illustrative style has always been captivating to me, though there are some moments where the cartooning feels more experimental. We get dinosaurs, vampires and the personification of Death across the sundry comics, giving us some nice variety. There's even a retelling of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and some fun homage stories to classic EC horror and sci-fi comics. The opening story, "Woman, Man, Bird", is probably my favorite of the bunch: a couple on a first date begin with banal conversation about their lives but it quickly escalates into the absurd. "Ulysses" is another story in this collection that presents Jason at his best - it's a derivative action adventure story, but Jason scraps every fun aspect of it (the sex scenes, fights, car chases, etc.) and leaves only the dialogue, presenting a hilariously bland story as a result. Not every comic was as entertaining though, and that variability in quality may have some readers less interested in this collection.
This book may not win any new Jason fans over - I feel like those more familiar with his unique cartooning will enjoy this book more. But if you're someone who's been curious about Jason, this could be a fun way to sample several different kinds of stories. I'm more familiar with Jason's longer form stories (I Killed Adolf Hitler, Left Bank Gang, etc.), but overall I had a fun time with Upside Dawn despite the brevity of the individual stories.
This book may not win any new Jason fans over - I feel like those more familiar with his unique cartooning will enjoy this book more. But if you're someone who's been curious about Jason, this could be a fun way to sample several different kinds of stories. I'm more familiar with Jason's longer form stories (I Killed Adolf Hitler, Left Bank Gang, etc.), but overall I had a fun time with Upside Dawn despite the brevity of the individual stories.
August 25, 2023
The Norwegian cartoonist, Jason, is a very creative fellow. His 2022 collection, Upside Dawn, contains stories that are homages to dada and surrealist writers (‘Woman, Man, Bird’, ‘Perec, PI’), to Eugene Ionesco’s theater of the absurd (‘Ionesco’), oh and to Dostoevsky and James Joyce and many others. ‘Prisoner in the Castle’ combines Kafka with the 60s TV show, The Prisoner. Ingmar Bergman (‘Seal VII’). My faves though were those with a lighter touch: ‘Spock in Paris’, ‘EC Come …’, a tale of murder featuring a Houdini-esque man & wife escape artist act.
But special attention must go to ‘Who Will Kill the Spider?’, a bonkers story about a guy trying to off a spider, failing in succession with: flyswatter, tennis racket, baseball bat, bug spray, a boxing kangaroo, elephant, gangster with tommy gun, steamroller, dynamite, and my favorite, an insane clown. The final panel is, for me, perhaps Jason’s finest moment. I couldn't find this image online, so took a photo of it, and tried to figure out how to transfer it to GR, but alas, it didn't work. GR isn't as friendly to outside images as it really, really, ought to be.
Edit: Well, with Jeff's help, I figured out how to get my photo on here. You have to jump thru even more hoops than to get a photo from the net, but here it is. Thanks, Jeff!
February 10, 2025
I have read a fair number of Jason's comics and generally enjoyed them. Sadly, this collection was on average dull and disappointing, except for a few instances. The main theme of this collection is adapting literary works or movies, or else heaping doses of nostalgia for old shows, movies, comics. I have only a passing familiarity with most of the source material, but I think even with a deeper understanding this would be a fairly weak showing. For example, "Crime and Punishment" reads like it is just a truncated version of the original (though I can't be sure). "From Outer Space" seems to be a series of images summarizing a schlocky sci-fi movie (presumably Plan 9 from Outer Space), but the text describes what I assume is an autobiographical account of taking hallucinogens and having a bad trip. Others are equally unengaging or off-puttingly nonsensical, but harder to summarize as I don't recognize the root material.
On the plus side, I did find many of the short comics in "Etc." enjoyable. I also liked "Seal VII" as a humorous adaptation of The Seventh Seal. And "Ulysses" transformed a book that has such a reputation of dull incomprehensibility that I will never attempt to read it into a silly farce of an action movie full of sex, violence, and lost treasure; it isn't a great read, but I found it amusing, particularly the use of single black panels with phrases like "sex scene", "car chase", "explanation" in place of actually depicting those events.
On the plus side, I did find many of the short comics in "Etc." enjoyable. I also liked "Seal VII" as a humorous adaptation of The Seventh Seal. And "Ulysses" transformed a book that has such a reputation of dull incomprehensibility that I will never attempt to read it into a silly farce of an action movie full of sex, violence, and lost treasure; it isn't a great read, but I found it amusing, particularly the use of single black panels with phrases like "sex scene", "car chase", "explanation" in place of actually depicting those events.
July 15, 2023
Po albumie w całości poświęconym Hemingwayowi, Jason wraca z typowym dla siebie zbiorem pełnym literackich i filmowych motywów, ikon popkultury i zabawy w ukrywanie tropów. Rozstrzał jest imponujący - od "Siódmej pieczęci" Bergmana i partii szachów ze śmiercią, przez biurokrację z dzieł Franza Kafki czy stylistyczną manierę George'a Pereca do streszczenia "Zbrodni i kary" i zabawy horrorami z EC Comics. W jednej historii poznajemy kosmiczny rodowód japońskiego malarza - Leonarda Foujity, w innej teorie na temat związków Eugene Ionesco z bananem. Jest też oczywiście lejtmotyw w postaci muszkietera Atosa.
Wszystkiego jest tu dużo, ale autor nie pozwala żadnej historii rozwinąć skrzydeł na tyle, by miała szansę konkurować z jego najlepszymi opowiadaniami. Czasem jest wrażenie, że to prace tworzone gdzieś na boku, wprawki przed właściwymi komiksami. Bywa, że śmieszą, ale często zmierzają donikąd, jakby brakło cierpliwości na pociągnięcie tematów albo od początku nie było na nie pomysłu. Oczywiście zdarzają się wśród tych piętnastu historii perełki, lecz jako całość "Upside dawn" jest pozycją, która nowych fanów raczej Jasonowi nie przysporzy.
Wszystkiego jest tu dużo, ale autor nie pozwala żadnej historii rozwinąć skrzydeł na tyle, by miała szansę konkurować z jego najlepszymi opowiadaniami. Czasem jest wrażenie, że to prace tworzone gdzieś na boku, wprawki przed właściwymi komiksami. Bywa, że śmieszą, ale często zmierzają donikąd, jakby brakło cierpliwości na pociągnięcie tematów albo od początku nie było na nie pomysłu. Oczywiście zdarzają się wśród tych piętnastu historii perełki, lecz jako całość "Upside dawn" jest pozycją, która nowych fanów raczej Jasonowi nie przysporzy.
March 4, 2023
Upside Dawn is cartoonist Jason’s strongest collection in some years, one strongly influenced by the literary: There’s an ode to George Perc in the form of a conventional murder mystery told with constraints, another for Joe Brainard’s I Remember, and Kafka retires from the Castle and is abducted into a new life per Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, with strikingly similar results. There’s even a straight-up version of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Creatively, this work feels like a break-through moment for Jason, inspired by a diverse range of sources and a willingness to experiment more with verbal/visual contexts. Long-time fans will love this, and newbies will want to check it out because it’s excellent and represents the current state of Jason’s art.
For more of my reviews, please see: https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
For more of my reviews, please see: https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
March 22, 2023
I wish I liked the stories as much as the beautiful book design by Fantagraphics. Didn't much care for the experimental bits. This is a collection of short stories. Standouts for me are an adaptation of what looks like an Italian crime film done with the characters from Ullyses, a Giallo film done with accompanying poetry, and Jason's version of Plan 9 From Outer Space. From my own experiences reading Jason's work, I think I would have loved this book if the stories were longer. Well maybe not that Dostoyeski riff, that one could have been shorter.
January 26, 2025
At times, this feels reminiscent of early Jason — short, absurd stories, some with a punchline, others just fading into nothingness, quite literally. The quality of each individual story varies, but as a whole, it provides an enjoyable experience. There may not be much new here, reinforcing the sense that Jason has been repeating himself in his recent books, especially after his Santiago volume. It's easy to be charmed by his art style and overlook that the content can feel a bit sparse. Here, it occasionally feels a bit thin.
December 19, 2022
I'd rank Upside Dawn toward the lower end of Jason's bibliography, but boy, that says a lot about how good the rest of his books are, doesn't it? He leans into his "literature nerd" side noticeably more than his "pop culture mashup" nerd side, so this book might appeal more to those of us with English lit degrees. Not every short is a winner, but most of them have wit and a sparkling moment - I'll be rereading this one again, for sure.
March 9, 2023
I'm used to comics that aren't easy-reads or accessible, but Upside Dawn was so wrought with pop culture references I didn't understand that it sullied the piece. I'm sure if I had understood them this collection of works would land better, as I did like the Star Trek "episode," but there were few comics that didn't require you to understand a reference beforehand. The ones that didn't rely on that aspect so heavily were able to stand out I think.
February 7, 2025
Que Jason es un genio del tebeo lo tiene claro cualquiera que haya estado más o menos atento al cómic europeo de estas últimas décadas.
Este tomo recopila historias con su inconfundible estilo gráfico aunque esta vez incorpora diálogos. Tienen un toque surrealista y están llenos de referencias variopintas, lo cual resulta muy disfrutón. Algunas me han encantado, pero en su conjunto la obra me parece un pelín por debajo de sus historietas mudas.
Este tomo recopila historias con su inconfundible estilo gráfico aunque esta vez incorpora diálogos. Tienen un toque surrealista y están llenos de referencias variopintas, lo cual resulta muy disfrutón. Algunas me han encantado, pero en su conjunto la obra me parece un pelín por debajo de sus historietas mudas.
December 14, 2022
A fun reimagining of multiple stories, including Crime & Punishment, Star Trek, and Ulysses. With dadaist and impressionist art styles, Jason effectively turns these stories on their head, from characterization of beloved figures to nearly Sparknotes-ing the tales themselves. A thick compilation of these makes for a truly fun afternoon.
July 17, 2023
This might be strangest collection of Jason’s short stories that he’s done so far! The first story, about a blind date that descends into some surreal nonsense, really sets the tone for the literary farces, experimental narratives, and pop culture pastiches that follow. My favorite stories are “Seal VII”, “What Rhymes with Giallo?”, The City of Light, Forever”, and “…EC Go”.
February 5, 2023
2.5 maybe. A combination of takes on works of literature and television that vary between synopses and send ups, plus some stories that mostly hinge on something that is clever on the surface, but after the novelty wears off feel like ways to cover up lazy storytelling.
February 12, 2023
По счастливой случайности здесь оказался не только комикс про Жоржа Перека, но и комикс-аллюзия на его книгу "Я помню", которую я только вчера дочитал :)
Ну и увидеть комикс-пародию на Седьмую печать Бергмана - вэри найс
Ну и увидеть комикс-пародию на Седьмую печать Бергмана - вэри найс
June 9, 2023
Solid 5. Jason is found what Bunuel and Dali were doing almost 100 years ago, and he does it with a vibrancy that is modern and timeless all at once. One of the greatest living surrealists--I feel we'll be talking about his work decades from now.
November 22, 2022
I love Jason, but this was not his best.
December 5, 2022
Greatest bits, but all new.
December 5, 2022
Another terrific collection by one of the world's greatest living cartoonists.
December 9, 2022
As usual with Jason, super elusive but also super charming.
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