cover image Soft City

Soft City

Hariton Pushwagner. New York Review Comics, $35 (160p) ISBN 978-1-68137 046-0

This lost work, now published in an oversize hardback edition, comes as an aesthetic revelation. Norwegian pop artist Pushwagner created this graphic novel in 1969 after an experience with LSD. It was rediscovered after Pushwagner received a revival with an art show in 2008 and a 2011 documentary. Echoing Ulysses in its one-day structure, and Kafka in its humorous yet cutting condemnation of bureaucratic systems, this book sweeps up the reader in vast yet minimalist panoramas emphasizing the visual monotony of tasks such as going to work and buying one’s daily bread. References to war and pop culture escapism reflect the troubling times in which the book was created. Through many scenes that read as hellish and dreary, Pushwagner’s joy for drawing never wanes. Packaged with a cover design and an introduction full of backstory by Chris Ware (Building Stories), as well as an afterword by art critic Martin Herbert, this book will delight fans of experimental and visually lush graphic novels. (Sept.)