Knock Knock

by Jason Shiga

Genres: Graphic Novels

About the author

Jason Shiga is an award-winning Asian American cartoonist from Oakland, California. Mr. Shiga's comics are known for their intricate, often "interactive" plots and occasionally random, unexpected violence. A mathematics major from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Shiga shares his love of logic and problem solving with his readers through puzzles, mysteries and unconventional narrative techniques.

Jason Shiga's life has been shrouded in mystery and speculation. According to his book jacket, he was a reclusive math genius who had died on the verge of his greatest discovery in June 1967. However, upon winning a 2003 Eisner award for talent deserving of wider recognition, a man claiming to be Jason Shiga appeared in front of an audience alive and well only to tell them that he had been living on an island in the South China Seas for the past 40 years. The man who accepted his award was Chris Brandt (also known as F.C. Brandt), who had disguised himself as Jason Shiga, and accepted the award at the behest of Jason's publisher (Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comic Books) and Jason himself.

At the age of 12, Shiga was the 7th highest ranked child go player in Oakland.[citation needed]
Jason Shiga makes a cameo appearance in the Derek Kirk Kim comic, "Ungrateful Appreciation" as a Rubik's Cube-solving nerd. Shiga is credited as the "Maze Specialist" for Issue 18 (Winter 2005/2006) of the literary journal McSweeney's Quarterly, which features a solved maze on the front cover and a (slightly different) unsolved maze on the back. The title page of each story in the journal is headed by a maze segment labeled with numbers leading to the first pages of other stories.
Jason Shiga's father, Seiji Shiga, was an animator who worked on the 1964 Rankin-Bass production Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Reviews

[Ettore Pasquini]

I can't claim to have read it all, but this Shiga-book is very entertaining. This comic book is 500 (five hundred!) pages long and it's an interactive book where you can choose your own destiny, in classic Shiga fashion. The possibilities are endless (I think Jason told me how many there are in total at one point, but I forget) and the rewards are high, as you can encounter situations that are very amusing and unexpected. It's really easy to "die"... that doesn't take away the fun, but actually makes the book sort of agile to read, in a way.

In a word: it's brilliant. It truly is.

[Yune · Rating 4 out of 5]

A self-published effort from the twisted comic mastermind Shiga, where you're guided to various page numbers depending on what course of action you want to take. It opens with a knock at the door of your room.

If you answer it, you die.

Go back to page one. Presumably you try some other option. Maybe you look in the drawers. Maybe you switch on the TV and catch the news. Eventually you piece together who's after you and why, and, just maybe, how to escape the "BLAM!" that ends your life and most of the panels you flip to.

I only managed to get my hands on this via a connection of a connection, and I'm hoping that the success of Meanwhile will get this out to more people who can maybe help me inch my way out of being shot.

[Tommaso Sciortino · Rating 5 out of 5]

So AWESOME!

Also, a bit frustrating!