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ponycanyon's review
1.0
Just terrible. Non-sequitur lines about semiotics and relationships from stick figures for 150 pages, like LOLcats with a big side of grad school pretense. I don't know if I'm more disgusted with Nilsen - who's normally capable of some great minimalist art and moody storytelling - for presenting this as a legitimate work/release, or with Fantagraphics for asking people to pay $20 for it.
Or maybe I'm just disgusted with five-star reviewers who want nothing more than to intellectualize it and feed the hype machine.
Or maybe I'm just disgusted with five-star reviewers who want nothing more than to intellectualize it and feed the hype machine.
carroq's review
1.0
I feel like there were a lot of elements in this book that didn't work for me. Normally, I am pretty forgiving with the drawings, but these were basically doodles. It felt like there wasn't a lot of effort put into them. When the images aren't appealing, it makes it difficult to be as engaged with the work as a whole.
The second thing that I didn't care for was the lack of continuity between the pieces. With monologues in the title it stands to reason that there will be one shots meant to stand alone. It felt like the creator tried to string things together in some way, but it didn't work well enough. This could be described as stream of consciousness, though I tend to enjoy books that use that method a lot more than this one.
The actual monologues weren't very funny to me either. This is probably what really made me dislike the book. It seemed like it was supposed to be humorous and either I didn't get it or it wasn't done very well. There were sketches that I found amusing. A handful of panels in a 260 page book doesn't cut it though. Unless you are a fan of Nilsen's work, I recommend passing on this one.
The second thing that I didn't care for was the lack of continuity between the pieces. With monologues in the title it stands to reason that there will be one shots meant to stand alone. It felt like the creator tried to string things together in some way, but it didn't work well enough. This could be described as stream of consciousness, though I tend to enjoy books that use that method a lot more than this one.
The actual monologues weren't very funny to me either. This is probably what really made me dislike the book. It seemed like it was supposed to be humorous and either I didn't get it or it wasn't done very well. There were sketches that I found amusing. A handful of panels in a 260 page book doesn't cut it though. Unless you are a fan of Nilsen's work, I recommend passing on this one.
katemilty's review
4.0
I loved the non-sequitars. This book didn't make a whole lot of sense the first time I read it, but then it took me an hour, so I might have the time to give it a second read-through. For only taking an hour to read, I would recommend it to anyone.
le13anna's review
4.0
The first half of this book I was like what the crap is going on. Then all of a sudden the humor clicked and i think it's genius. i'm afraid to show it to anyone else though in case they have my first reaction and think i'm crazy for falling in love with it.
xterminal's review
2.0
Anders Nilsen, Monologues for the Coming Plague (Fantagraphics Books, 2006)
I was fond enough of Dogs and Water (viz. 14Mar2009 review) to go looking for more of Anders Nilsen's work, and the title of this one intrigued me from the first time I saw it; one of the libraries in my system, all of which seem notoriously slow at getting things in, finally grabbed a copy last year, so I put it on hold and waited patiently until last week. What I can tell you after reading it: Dogs and Water it is not, by any means.
While Nilsen mentions in a brief afterword that he did rearrange a few things for the sake of continuity (of which there is a bit, but not much), it is inferred that this is simply excerpts from two sketchbooks, complete with markouts and the like. This does serve in that it seems to fit rather well with Nilsen's overarching existential crisis/semiotics theme, but could just as easily be dismissed as laziness, if you're so inclined. While there are some pieces here that make use of that theme (by far the best of these is “Pittsburgh”, an Our Town-esque journey in which one character's head becomes the head of a different animal in each frame of the first two-thirds of the story, depending on how he's feeling and/or what he's doing), too much of the book seems to be just alternate takes on a single joke; there are long stretches containing the same woman-feeding-a-bird setup with variations (sometimes very slight) on a punchline. Two or three wouldn't have been out of place in The New Yorker, but the combined weight of seventy or so is a bit deleterious. For the completist only. **
I was fond enough of Dogs and Water (viz. 14Mar2009 review) to go looking for more of Anders Nilsen's work, and the title of this one intrigued me from the first time I saw it; one of the libraries in my system, all of which seem notoriously slow at getting things in, finally grabbed a copy last year, so I put it on hold and waited patiently until last week. What I can tell you after reading it: Dogs and Water it is not, by any means.
While Nilsen mentions in a brief afterword that he did rearrange a few things for the sake of continuity (of which there is a bit, but not much), it is inferred that this is simply excerpts from two sketchbooks, complete with markouts and the like. This does serve in that it seems to fit rather well with Nilsen's overarching existential crisis/semiotics theme, but could just as easily be dismissed as laziness, if you're so inclined. While there are some pieces here that make use of that theme (by far the best of these is “Pittsburgh”, an Our Town-esque journey in which one character's head becomes the head of a different animal in each frame of the first two-thirds of the story, depending on how he's feeling and/or what he's doing), too much of the book seems to be just alternate takes on a single joke; there are long stretches containing the same woman-feeding-a-bird setup with variations (sometimes very slight) on a punchline. Two or three wouldn't have been out of place in The New Yorker, but the combined weight of seventy or so is a bit deleterious. For the completist only. **
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