Fantastic Life by Kevin Mutch

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.