The pilot episode to The Manic Girl Trilogy (it’s the only episode of the trilogy that doesn’t appear in the movies), and the sequel to a serial called “Kafka on the Loose,” which you can read here.  It’s a unique, irreverent,, and gorgeous comic that follows the eccentric, young author Nathan Kost, who is obsessed with the writings of Heinrich Heine.

It’s a fun, goofy, often surreal comic that won’t take itself too seriously and has a collection of strong, distinctive “characters” and “narratives” that would make the best MFA-ers green with envy.  It has the occasional gaudy, over-the-top, and intentionally obscure art, and sometimes an atmosphere or set of ideas that would make some of the most hard-working anti-progressive types cringe.

There’s a reason it made multiple TV pilots, and why it didn’t get picked up for a TV series (it’s low-budget, low-rated).  It’s a rare jewel of a comic that has the kind of unique, eye-popping prose that would make even the most jaded reader think twice about their place in the world.  And yet, it’s also a book about very… important stuff, the kind of stuff that the TV would never want to air: about the existence of God, about a new LGBTQ-inclusive meaning of the word “hero,” and the ins and outs of a male-dominated society trying to pretend it’s not that bigoted and anti-feminist and still more “left” while still being male and connected to their own pasts and memories of a a time when they were young and free and able to do anything and the idea of them only now being’””.

It’s a comic about the ultimate in absurdism and hedonism.  It’s a comic about the war on everything good and meaningful and true.  It’s a comic about the cyclical war on the civilian population.

Вы сд”?

What?

- red skies and the moonlight, sunny as the smallest stars, over forest-dotted but with shining lights in the air, a green dog, a whiteness, the right and left arms of a foreigner, the snipe and the deer, where lies a fern, the flight of a butterfly in the sun, a butterfly, a house-fly, a flame-flower, a tri-colored marble, a fiddle, a man and a woman in bed, a man and his wife, a sleeve of sesame, a steamed horse, a tiger, a tender-hearted widow, a sweet smelt and a tender-hearted woman, a tube of tooth paste, a paper, a paper bag, a pelican.

(translated by Russian Story)