Animal Stories
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
What separates us from animals? What connects us? Award-winning cartoonists Peter and Maria Hoey probe these mysteries across six surreal and interconnected stories. After tremendous acclaim for their series Coin-Op Comics, two brilliant creators present their first graphic novel: a menagerie of wild tales. Pushing the boundaries of their dazzling and unique narrative style, Animal Stories weaves together six short stories exploring the mysterious relationships between humans and other animals. A girl who keeps pigeons starts receiving messages from a new bird in her flock. A ship’s crew rescues a dog, only to find far stranger things in the sea around them. A reincarnated cat with criminal intentions, a parrot who leads a revolution, and a squirrel who tempts a woman in a beautiful garden glade. Drawing inspiration from Aesop’s Fables, film noir, and the Old Testament, Peter and Maria Hoey apply their singular and sophisticated visual storytelling to create a new set of modern animal tales for modern times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Hoeys, the Eisner-nominated brother-and-sister team behind the Coin-Op series, present a delightfully strange collection of linked stories pondering just how little people truly know about animals. Each tale is based on an initially mundane animal-human interaction that pivots into more unreal, ominous territory drawing more from noir, the Bible, and The Twilight Zone than cozily reassuring pet tales. Some setups are constructed around mysteries: a schoolgirl who tends pigeons on her building's roof starts getting alluring messages in "ghostly cursive" delivered by a bird with obscure origins; a man wonders where his cat disappears to over days and nights. Others have benign premises (a park groundskeeper is annoyed a couple lets their dog off the leash) but take wild turns (the park may actually be the Garden of Eden). The twists range from straight comedy (the dog who turns out to be the president of the United States) to eerie iterations of animal autonomy (the bird who refuses "to play the fool, whistling and begging for crackers"). The precise and brightly colored art has a blocky clarity that renders the characters like avatars in a simulation game, suggesting behind-the-scenes manipulations. This thought-provoking graphic story collection shines with curious humor found in unexpected connections.
