Vignettes of Ystov

A poetic and poignant graphic novel, where the washed-out and lonely urban landscape of the fictional city of Ystov provides the setting for a series of remarkable stories

Welcome to Ystov, a bleak but whimsical city. Readers are invited to zoom in and out, through panoramas of industry and market squares, to witness the varied lives of its curious inhabitants—lives of absurdities, restraints, and small triumphs. Meet the poet Eugene Tusk, stumbling upon the old haunts of the Strombold Collective, his defunct poetry society. Or the property agent Yosef Kavar—clearing the apartment of a recently deceased janitor, and discovering a homemade museum dedicated to a lifetime's collection of dustpan detritus. What about this pair of scientists—fed up with astrophysics and out to disprove coincidences as a phenomenon? And here are two men meeting to discuss the fate of an old schoolfriend, piecing together their memories of him, searching for clues that might have led to his sudden arrest for "nose-crimes." Beautifully drawn, and written with a Chekhovian clarity and concision, this series of miniature masterpieces marks the arrival of one of the most inventive new talents in comics.