The Past is a Grotesque Animal

The Past is a Grotesque Animal

A rich collection/scrapbook of over two dozen short stories, plus diary entries, photos, and other images fueled by a propensity to understand the way we relate to each other, and told with a visual and lyrical beauty ― and raw emotion ― that collectively reaffirms the power of art. 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. Full-color illustrations throughout "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 Tommi Parrish (b. 1989, Melbourne) is a trans Australian cartoonist and painter living in Western Massachusetts. Their debut work, The Lie and How We Told It , won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for the best LGBTQ graphic novel, was nominated for the Ignatz award, was featured in many best of 2018 lists, and translated into 11 languages worldwide. Tommi was the 2020 recipient of the Center For Cartoon Studies Fellowship and their work has been showcased in The New Yorker , Granta Magazine, The New York Times , Pitchfork , Vice , and many more. Author(s): Tommi Parrish Release Date: November 5, 25