Fantastic Life
by Kevin Mutch
Blurred Books, 2011

Kind of an ode to early Dan Clowes, with some very close references to the paranoid dream logic of the almost-forgotten Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and the hipster pretensions of Art School Confidential. It’s Winnipeg in 1982 (Ooh! Spooky already!) and musician Adam is having an extremely unsettling night with a personal timeline that seems to be out of sequence. He wakes up after a party in bed with an artists’ model who he thought had left with someone else earlier, and finds his apartment full of paintings – his paintings, with his name signed to him. He discovers he’s expected to present a massive canvas he hastily names Miss Twin Volcanoes of Boob Island to what turns out to be a feminist art class. Also, zombies!

It turns out to be the fault of the gespensterfeld. Again! This book was the result of a Xeric grant, so it’s perfectly entitled to discuss quantum mechanics and quote The Fall. The rest of us have no such excuse.