The End
Assembled from Nilsen’s sketchbooks in the two years following the death of his fiancée, Cheryl Weaver in 2005, The End is a collection of short strips about loss, paralysis, waiting, and transformation. The book is a concept album in different styles, a meditation on paying attention, an abstracted autobiography and a travelogue, reflecting the progress of the struggle to reconcile the great upheaval of a death, and finding a new life on the other side. The book blends Nilsen's disparate styles, from iconic simplicity to collaged drawings to finely rendered line art. The first edition was nominated for an L.A. Times Book Award in 2014.
This new edition of The End is substantially expanded and revised — it is almost double the size of the original edition — incorporating new work from the intervening years, as well as more material from Nilsen’s original sketchbooks, adding greater perspective to an already intimate window into the way we grieve, a process that can span decades. The new edition also features a new afterword by the author, notes on the various pieces’ origins, and over 20 pages of Cheryl Weaver's own remarkable artwork.
$24.99
“A rare beast of autobiographic narrative that’s both deeply tragic and wonderfully life-affirming.”
“Eighty-eight pages of the most crushingly raw, honest and affecting comics I have read in some time.”