Anders Nilsen’s The End

We have a fantastic holiday gift card offer going on right now—you really should stop by the store and take advantage of our generosity! And while you’re there, I recommend heading over to our graphic novel section to take a look at The End.

In the year following the death of his fiancée, acclaimed cartoonist Anders Nilsen filled his sketchbooks with a series of short strips about loss, metamorphosis, and stagnation. They were originally released as a magazine in 2007 (and received an Ignatz Award nomination for Outstanding Story); in 2013 the collection was expanded and published as The End. It’s a raw, unsentimental, and occasionally absurd book, a harrowing collage of grief as it is being lived through.

Anders Nilsen

Comics critic Rob Clough calls the book “a staggering, bracing read.” And Malvernite Taylor Jacob Pate had this to say about The End:

I hope, one day, someone loves me this much, and is this crushed, when, I die. I’m glad, I read this, while I’m still alive. The rest of my life is better now.