Upside Dawn

Norwegian cartoonist Jason gathers his most eccentric short comics in this collection, which stretches across time, space, and genre. Most pages are black and white, with some color.

The stories include a dinner date that collapses into a Dadaist farce, a chess match in which Death decides a victim's fate, and Kafka trapped in a bureaucracy of his own invention. In another, Spock beams down to 1920s Paris and leads a double life as an avant-garde painter. Other pieces take up Hitchcock-style suspense, adaptations of literary works, and tributes to classic EC comics. Dinosaurs, David Bowie, vampires, and Elvis also make appearances.

Jason blends genres and mixes low and high culture, moving from Star Trek to Georges Perec, with sharp turns in every story. The collection is aimed at longtime fans of his work and at readers who have never picked up one of his books.