Description
Description
Tommi Parrish is an Australian trans cartoonist and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Balancing emotional honesty with a keen awareness of the human condition, Parrish navigates fear, loneliness, identity, body politics, queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-fluid nature of all human relationships. The Past is a Grotesque Animal collects over two dozen short stories of varying lengths, interspersed with ephemera from Parrish's own life: diary entries, photographs, illustrations, paintings, and more.
Parrish's autobiographical elements inform their voice as a writer and the ways their characters constantly find one another adrift in their own seas of experience, current situations, trauma, and desire. How those characters coexist, how they are complicated by outside forces, and internal ones, affect our hardwired need for meaningful connection. The book also showcases Parrish's singular and assured visual style, blending clear lines, expressionistic character designs and gorgeously complex, hand-painted color.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
No cartoonist working today does interpersonal drama as authentically as Parrish.-- "Four-Color Apocalypse"
Parrish is great at making panels that you can both read and linger over.--Dash Shaw (Bottomless Belly Button)
Parrish has one of my favorite traits in a cartoonist: intense passion for the craft. They are rapidly evolving and experimenting wildly and it's joyful to watch.--Simon Hanselmann (Megahex)
This collection is like opening Tommi Parrish's drawers and finding ten years of work scattered across the table. From 2013 to 2023, everything that's obsessed them: fear, loneliness, identity, queer desire, the body as battleground. What emerges, right from the first few pages, is a confident artistic voice and a willingness to explore the human condition with an almost brutal honesty.-- "RetroFuturista"
Even the most obsessive of fans will not have tracked down most of these pieces from their original micro print runs, making the book an engrossing compendium of Parrish's career to date. Above all, it's wildly inspirational, exhibiting such a burning DIY ethos that any aspiring creators are likely to catch a spark.-- "Cinema Sentries"
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Fantagraphics Books
Pub date:
2025-11-04
Length:
220 pages
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