Montreal-based publishing house Pow Pow Press, fresh off an Eisner win for Boum’s The Jellyfish, will be publishing The Mongoose by Portuguese cartoonist Joana Mosi this fall. The Portuguese edition of O Mangusto, published in 2023 by A Seita, was the recipient of the prestigious Jorge Magalhães Award for Outstanding Story.
The Mongoose tells the story of Júlia, a former track and field star who finds herself living with her unemployed brother Joel in their grandmother’s beach house, uncertain of what comes next. In the aftermath of a devastating loss, Júlia tries to convince her family and friends that she’s doing just fine, but when her nascent garden plot is destroyed one night, Júlia becomes obsessed with finding the culprit… A mongoose whose existence no one else seems to believe in.
Drawn in a minimalist, experimental style that brings to mind the work of creators like Nick Drnaso and Richard McGuire, The Mongoose is an emotionally-resonant story about the ways we sidestep grief—and how it eventually finds us anyway.
“I wanted to create a story that didn’t dwell directly on grief, although that is the underlying theme,” Mosi explains. “I was more interested in deconstructing the side effects of it, exploring denial and avoidance responses common for those who undergo a deep, painful loss.”
Although The Mongoose is a fictional narrative, Mosi drew on her own life experience to create it: “Going through a hard time processing loss and grief myself, I can’t help but admit that I wanted to find some comfort in telling this story—not by finding any answers from it, but instead by growing comfortable and understanding better these themes.”
Mosi realized that many depictions of grief didn’t capture the surprising ways trauma could reveal itself. “More than a painful experience, I’ve experienced grief as a non-linear, abstract, and detached position that isolated me from feeling anything at all,” she says. “Where’s the long, loud cry? The broken dishes? The sad piano soundtracks? I’ve always felt that deep sadness comes quiet, cold, and still.”
Mosi originally came to the attention of Pow Pow Press founder and editor Luc Bossé in the course of a portfolio review at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF). Having traveled from Portugal to Canada with a preliminary draft of the story, Mosi showed it to Bossé, who found the graphic novel “incredibly impressive.”
“She left a copy [of The Mongoose] with me, and I took it back to the Pow Pow table, and I couldn’t stop reading it,” recalls Bossé. “I was just so impressed by the quality of her work… It is rare that you meet a creator with that clear of an artistic vision. Before the weekend was over I made Joana an offer to publish the book in both French and English.”
Following the release of La mangouste in 2023, Pow Pow Press is now bringing The Mongoose to English-speaking readers around the world. Mosi notes, “This is the longest comic I have ever worked on and I can’t wait to share it with you.”
“The idea came first in 2018 as a short story. It was a weird period, and storytelling came as an attempt to process the unbearable. Eventually, the story of a woman that went mad due to an obsession with a mongoose demanded something longer, to the point I thought it could make sense as a graphic novel,” recounts Mosi. “It was during my residence at the Open Workshop in Viborg in 2021 that I finished the last pages, surrounded by friends, laughter, cheap beer, and YouTube karaoke nights.”
Mosi and Pow Pow will quickly follow up The Mongoose with the publication in April of 2026 of Physical Education, a graphic novel that Pow Pow Marketing Manager François Vigneault describes as “a weird and wry portrait of post-modern life.”
“I think it’s fantastic that readers will get more of Joanna’s unique voice so soon,” notes Vigneault. “I’m convinced that she is a major new voice in international comics.”
When asked who her ideal reader is, Mosi has a refreshingly open answer: “Hopefully, anyone who randomly stumbles into this book.”
The Beat is delighted to unveil a look at an exclusive excerpt from The Mongoose.
Pow Pow Press will publish The Mongoose on October 15. The Mongoose is currently available for preorder via Lunar Distribution and it will be available in bookstores and comic book shops throughout the world.
