The Wayside by Julie Morstad

Writer/Artist: Julie Morstad Publisher: Drawn + Quarterly 2012 Somewhere between Emily Winfield Martin’s sweet vintage illustrations for The Black Apple and Hideo Nakata’s visions of avenging nature spirits lies Julie Morstad’s work, which has the genuine creepiness of non-bowdlerized fairytales. The Wayside is more a collection of drawings than a comic proper, but it does have moments of sequential storytelling, mostly in its first few pages. Whether there’s an overarching narrative hidden throughout the book is indeterminate, especially without words to help, but it seems likely that any links among the individual vignettes are more thematic than plot-based. Morstad’s...  read more