A comiXologist recommends:
Big Questions

by: Stephanie Mannheim

One of the things I love about the publisher Drawn and Quarterly is how their artists use the comics medium in unique and exciting ways. Big Questions by Anders Nilsen is no exception– at 600 pages, it’s a long and ambitious book following a community of birds as they tackle issues such as death, obligation and guilt. The drama starts to unfold when a bomb lands in their home, which the birds believe is an egg. As the birds try to figure out the egg’s meaning, we meet some of the other creatures in the area, as well as two humans—a strange man who lives among the animals and a stranded pilot who is hostile towards them.

Nilsen’s black and white artwork moves easily from sparse to detailed based on the situations in the story. His main protagonists, the birds, look pretty much indistinguishable on the surface, but as the story moves on, we really get a feel for their individual personalities and interpersonal relationships. Likewise, their deceptively simple designs—two dots for eyes and a triangle for a beak—still allow the birds to convey deep emotions through dialogue and eerie visions. Like a lot of Nilsen’s work, the book is quiet but tense, and the birds in this story feel more relatable than their human neighbors. It’s a quick, engrossing read that I would recommend to anybody interested in the experimental, artsy work published by Drawn and Quarterly.

[Read Big Questions on comiXology]

Stephanie Mannheim is a Digital Editor at comiXology and draws a comic called “Roxie”.  She lives in Ridgewood, Queens.