Winners

by Anna Ehrlemark (Illustrator)

128 pages of stories about family, nostalgia, chance, witchcraft, sex, abstinence, economy, and revenge. Science fiction in a future that is already old, a dangerous place where winners lose and losers win. Anna comics are inspired by life during wartime, but they are never specifically political. Instead she distills the psyche of a post-apocalyptic culture into jet-black, surreal allegories.

Anna Ehrlemark is well known in Eastern Europe for her unconventional, twisted narratives and her striking visual style. Her comics explore feminist, queer, and anti-capitalist themes and she has been published by the Balkan collectives Stripburger, Fijuk, and Komikaze.

Genres: Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

Reviews

[Chad]

Terrible art that's really just a set of images with no story.

[Kim]

gripping images by a talented artist

[StrictlySequential ArtNarrative]

I'm a guy who wants to get a taste of all "scenes" so I took a chance on this. That gives grade flexibility but this is just plain bad unless you know what issues, events, etc. are behind all the sloppy madness inside.

You don't have to be picky to say the art stinks- it looked like much of it was smeared on the pages with a poop brush (not a joke) when clearly she can draw just fine.

I enjoyed two of twelve "stories" and the sad part is that they totaled no more than fifteen pages.

[Rick Ray]

A bunch of short yarns by Anna Ehrlemark. Her art style is on the rougher side, but it does add a lot of texture to the various stories. The stories vary in theme and tone, so there's no real throughline or connective tissue. The only common themes appear to be ritualism, sex and mutilation, but I couldn't tell if there was something to take from one story to the next. There wasn't really anything very gripping about the stories themselves, but overall this does feel like an interesting sampling. Nina Bunjevac writes an afterword that adds a colorful perspective of Ehrlemark as well.

[Mark Laliberte]

Wonderfully dark and weird, a great use of black and white; every page is well-designed, full of thick-lined, Mat Brinkmanesque drawings. It’s a quick read, but compelling … I’ll revisit this little collection a few times, surely.

[Derek Royal]

I enjoyed this collection from Ehrlemark. The art is certainly edgy and rough, and appropriately so. Much of the stories here involve roughness or violence or destruction in some way. One of my favorites is the final narrative, "Happy Ending," because of its humor...and on the final pages, darkly so.

[Anna Wallman]

Thoughtful short stories, with elaborate pictures. A piece of Modern Art!
Anna, if you read this; I chuckled at "She looked like a Soviet factory worker" :)

[Andy]

3.5 stars

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