Cities of the Fantastic: The Invisible Frontier, Vol. 2

Schuiten and Peeters published the first volume of this satire of political unrest in the former Yugoslavia almost two years ago. Its conclusion takes the story into even stranger territory. While volume one had a more or less linear plot, this installment dissolves that approach within a few pages, lapsing into short, dreamlike fragments. The central mystery concerns a young cartographer involved with a woman named Shkodra who has a birthmark-like map of the state of Sodrovno-Voldachhia on her buttocks (which affords Schuiten plenty of tacky artistic opportunities). Over the course of the book, the two wander through a castle filled with biological horrors, traverse forests and walls, have uneasy run-ins with military police and find themselves in increasingly fantastic landscapes, as the form of the country increasingly echoes Shkodra's body. The subtext seems to be that political revolution mangles the natural order of things, and that the shapes a cartographer follows can be transformed (as in one memorable scene where the landscape turns into an endless field of tombstones). Schuiten's artwork is exquisite: he handles the plot's slow, bizarre transformations with graceful understatement, and his meticulous colored-pencil shading gives everything a rich, weathered texture. If readers try to map the book's plot, they'll be lost. This work is meant to disturb, not to be understood. (Oct.)