Unended
Will be published approx. on 21. December 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-941250-56-3 (ISBN)
Description
IGNATZ AWARD Nomination for OUTSTANDING GRAPHIC NOVEL
What prevents you from finishing your life's work?
Josh Bayer finds a manuscript of an unfinished play inside his deceased father's desk. The play tells the story of Josh's mother's early death (age 37) and his father's struggle with single parenthood. When he attempts to adapt the play into comics, it triggers a series of personal crises. Bayer's limitations and futile ambitions are brought into sharp relief as he grapples with an estranged, unknowable parent and the play's frustrating lack of resolution.
Humans worship lore, myth, and fables, but many people's creative dreams become abandoned. Why?
Bayer's inky line, tangled textures, and kaleidoscopic color boldly fuse on the page into comic book semiotics, flights of grandeur, and tangents inside tangents. Josh Bayer stitches scattered memories into surrealistic episodes permeated with dream logic. Unended is a Promethean quest to excavate the creative fire hidden inside us.
What prevents you from finishing your life's work?
Josh Bayer finds a manuscript of an unfinished play inside his deceased father's desk. The play tells the story of Josh's mother's early death (age 37) and his father's struggle with single parenthood. When he attempts to adapt the play into comics, it triggers a series of personal crises. Bayer's limitations and futile ambitions are brought into sharp relief as he grapples with an estranged, unknowable parent and the play's frustrating lack of resolution.
Humans worship lore, myth, and fables, but many people's creative dreams become abandoned. Why?
Bayer's inky line, tangled textures, and kaleidoscopic color boldly fuse on the page into comic book semiotics, flights of grandeur, and tangents inside tangents. Josh Bayer stitches scattered memories into surrealistic episodes permeated with dream logic. Unended is a Promethean quest to excavate the creative fire hidden inside us.
Reviews / Votes
"The art nods to classic comics, though with a visceral, surrealist bent indebted to Raymond Pettibon's punk LP sleeves as much as Anselm Kiefer and Kaethe Kollwitz's haunted expressionism. Long-limbed figures skulk the panels, contorted by anguish and insecurity, and Bayer sometimes draws his father wearing an executioner's hood. Details require close reading in swirling compositions that flood the senses, but the obsessive reckoning with legacy resonates throughout. This charged account of the past's enduring grip is a triumph." - Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review"Josh Bayer is a true expressionist comics hero. His relentless self-questioning, analog punk struggle, reifies the eternity of the comics as the greatest artform."
- Matthew Thurber, Art Comic, Mr. Colostomy
"Heart-rending and sense-flooding, gorgeous, tragic, generous and vulnerable - UNENDED is an artwork I'll never forget." - Jonathan Lethem
"For a graphic novel about unfinished narratives, Unended is incredibly satisfying to read, and a masterclass in the potential of comix that sit outside of the expected." - Solrad
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
MN
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
color
Dimensions
Height: 252 mm
Width: 192 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
737 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-941250-56-3 (9781941250563)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Josh Bayer lives in Harlem and has worked as a Graphic
Novelist, Fine Artist, and Illustrator for twenty years. Josh is the editor of
the anthology Suspect Device and the author of Theth, Raw
Power, Theth Tomorrow Forever, RM, and Black Star.
Additionally, he is the editor and writer of the All Time Comics imprint
from Floating World Comics and Fantagraphics. His
style is characterized by a genre fusion tying together different historical
cartooning styles with a devout punk rock anti-narrative. His comics work was
reprinted in the Best American Comics series in 2014 and 2017,
selected from work across the country by editors Ben Katchor and Jonathan
Letham. Bayer has an extensive career producing conceptual art for various TV and film productions for clients, including MTV, HBO, and Amnesty
International. Josh earned an MFA in Illustration and Cartooning in 2009 and
has taught professionally since 2007 at schools all over New York.
Novelist, Fine Artist, and Illustrator for twenty years. Josh is the editor of
the anthology Suspect Device and the author of Theth, Raw
Power, Theth Tomorrow Forever, RM, and Black Star.
Additionally, he is the editor and writer of the All Time Comics imprint
from Floating World Comics and Fantagraphics. His
style is characterized by a genre fusion tying together different historical
cartooning styles with a devout punk rock anti-narrative. His comics work was
reprinted in the Best American Comics series in 2014 and 2017,
selected from work across the country by editors Ben Katchor and Jonathan
Letham. Bayer has an extensive career producing conceptual art for various TV and film productions for clients, including MTV, HBO, and Amnesty
International. Josh earned an MFA in Illustration and Cartooning in 2009 and
has taught professionally since 2007 at schools all over New York.