It’s funny that I read this book when I did.  I picked it up while visiting a shop on Free Comic Book Day, but just got around to reading it.  The next day, Tale Foundery did a whole video on finding beauty in rot, including the recent fascination people have had with whalefalls.  And that’s all sort of wrapped up in Stages of Rot, but Linnea Sterte takes it in some very wild directions. 

There’s not a ton of script in the book.  I’ll admit, my old eyes had a hard time reading the lettering sometimes.  But there’s not much of it.  The whole thing is very visual.  It’s a strange thing to point out about a graphic novel, but having read a lot of Golden and Silver Age comics, being reminded that comics are a visual medium is sometimes necessary.  

The art reminds me of European comic artists of the 70s and 80s.  The most obvious being Moebius.  But I was also reminded of the animation work of René Laloux, with films like Fantastic Planet (1973) and Gandahar (1987).  Also, if you enjoyed the frustratingly canceled animated series Scavengers Reign from 2023, you should find plenty to enjoy here.

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I can’t really tell you what this is about in any meaningful way.  What I can say is that we’re shown a world where creatures that appear like aquatic animals from Earth swim through the sky.  One such creature is a whale, and the book covers the stages of decay when a whalefall occurs.  There are people who try to harvest parts of the corpse.  There’s weird stuff with a fairy-like whale-pilot.  Some bugs get extra weird.  If you’re ready to just go with it and not demand a ton of clear logic, enjoy.  If you’re a lot smarter than me, maybe you’ll find meaning and logic that I don’t.

I like when comics push the edges of the medium and do something unusual.  This qualifies.  Hopefully, this will keep a place on my shelf, and someone will flip through it and have their brain melt, even if just a little bit.  

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