{"id":33641,"date":"2025-08-23T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33641"},"modified":"2025-08-21T14:29:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:29:54","slug":"sshhhh-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/08\/23\/sshhhh-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sshhhh!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Jason<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-56097-497-0 (TBB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced for dramatic and comedic effect.<\/em><\/p>\n

Born this day in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne S\u00e6ter\u00f8y is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume<\/em>. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to international cartoon superstardom in 1995, once first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn<\/em><\/strong> (Pocket Full of Rain<\/strong>) won Norway\u2019s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. Prior to that, he had contributed to alternate\/indie magazine KonK<\/em><\/strong> whilst, from 1987, studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo\u2019s Art Academy, before going on to Norway\u2019s National School of Arts. After graduating in 1994, three years later he founded his own comic book Mjau Mjau<\/em><\/strong>, citing Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring and Tex Avery as his primary influences and constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-laden anthropomorphic minimalism.<\/p>\n

Moving to Copenhagen Jason worked at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta<\/em><\/strong>, Mar Mysteriet Surn<\/em><\/strong>\/Mayday Mysteries<\/strong>, Den Anden Praesident<\/em><\/strong>, Det Tredje Ojet<\/em><\/strong>) and Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol<\/em>\/The Hidden Protocol<\/strong>, World War X<\/strong>, Tarzan<\/strong>, Books of Magic<\/strong>, Starman<\/strong>, Batman: Detective 27<\/strong>). His efforts were internationally noticed, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau<\/em><\/strong> – and from 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels, winning even more major awards.<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s breadth of interest is wide and deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, high literature and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. This puckish and egalitarian mixing and matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

Over a succession of tales Jason built and constantly employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes of movies, childhood entertainments, historical and literary favourites. These all role play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. In latter years, Jason returned to such \u201cfound\u201d players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them \u201cteam-up\u201d or clash\u2026<\/p>\n

As always, visual\/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued, or even as here silently pantomimic progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Herg\u00e9\u2019s Claire Ligne<\/em> style: solid blacks, and thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.
\n\"\"
\nThe majority of his tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality: largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on those inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes.<\/p>\n

A perfect example of his oeuvre is \u2018Sshhhh!\u2019<\/em>: a deliciously evocative, extended romantic melodrama created without words; the bittersweet tale of boy-bird meeting girl-bird in a world overly populated with spooks and ghouls and skeletons. The archetypes and cartoon critters are similarly afflicted by far more harsh demons: loneliness and regret.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not just that. It\u2019s also boy-bird loses girl-bird to death, other men, his own inadequacies and the vagaries of parenthood. It\u2019s about how money fixes nothing and how Death is ever at your elbow and can be – quite frankly – a bit of a nuisance. It\u2019s sex and death and discontentment and bloody ungrateful kids; aliens; being invisible; miserable vacations; disappointing locations: guys who are sexier than you and The Devil…<\/p>\n

… And birds-nests…<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s work always jumps directly into the reader\u2019s brain and heart, always probing the nature of \u201chuman-ness\u201d by visually invoking the beastly and unnatural to ask persistent and pertinent questions. Although clever sight-gags are less prominent here, his repertory company still uncannily display the subtlest emotions with devastating effect, proving again just how good a cartoonist he is.
\n\"\"
\nThis comic tale is best suited for adults but makes us all look at the world through wide-open childish eyes. Jason is instantly addictive and a creator every serious fan of the medium should move to the top of the \u201cMust-Have\u201d list. Don\u2019t even wait for a physical copy, buy a digital edition ASAP, just so you can see immediately what all the fuss is about…
\nAll characters, stories and artwork \u00a9 1998, 1999, 2008 Jason. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jason (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-56097-497-0 (TBB\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic and comedic effect. Born this day in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne S\u00e6ter\u00f8y is known globally by his enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume. The shy & retiring draughts-scribe started on the path to international cartoon superstardom in 1995, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sshhhh!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[262,63,125,148,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropomorphic","category-european-classics","category-humour","category-romance","category-satirepolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8KB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33647,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33641\/revisions\/33647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}