A grotesque man (but then everyone here is fairly grotesque, the most attractive character resembling an inexpertly shaved George RR Martin) is questioned by police about something bad that he's done, and begins to unfold his story, albeit in a digressive fashion which winds the detectives up something chronic. He talks about growing up fat, about the fear of disappointing his family, and the terrible relief he felt when the last of them died, freeing him to be a bum. This is only the first part of his account, so we still don't know exactly what his crime was, but I already feel more invested than I expected in his story, helped by the way in which Larcenet's art, for all that the humans are hideous, really captures the quiet beauty of northern Europe in the cold seasons, and of the wildlife that haunts it if you stop long enough to let them show. And then, of course, there's the blast of the title, the strange epiphanies which upend the protagonist's life. These are represented as intrusions of colour into an otherwise monochrome story, which wouldn't be that original – except that they're the crude crayon scribbles of a child. And that, oh that is fabulous. Like in James Branch Cabell, where our world is indeed the work of the gods...but of the youngest and most immature of them, intently engaged in an activity the more respectable deities consider roughly akin to making mud pies. The notion that our greatest mystics are being overwhelmed by the most minor and amateur expressions of the highest world; I love the audacity, the use of the comics medium to inject something which stands so much unpacking. Excellent work.
(Netgalley ARC)