Death in Trieste
Cartoonist: Jason
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Publication Date: September 2025
Funny animal comics are one of the cornerstones of the comics field. The most notable of these are household names like Garfield or Scrooge McDuck, but even more obscure fare like US Acres or Funny Animals has an air of delight and fascination to it. Jason has spent his entire career working in the funny animal mold.
It might sound odd putting him in this framing considering his work is frequently discussed in the pages of The Comics Journal and other literary fare. And yet, Jason has always remained a fixture of genre. The most obvious of these is perhaps I Killed Adolf Hitler, a time travel farce about an assassin who fails to kill Adolf Hitler. We follow him in the wake of the decades he’s spent in the past while the people around him come to terms with how time has remained unchanged even as he’s come to terms with its passing. Equally, The Left Bank Gang is a crime caper in which a bunch of literary authors from the early 20th century rob a bank. And, of course, Werewolves of Montpellier is about Werewolves of Montpellier.
But at the heart of these stories, is a dry wit and a minimalistic art style that emphasizes the melancholy and absurdity of these genre tales. In turn, making the jokes even funnier. And Death in Trieste is no different. Telling a triptych of short stories — one a mystery story about artists being kidnapped by a madman, another exploring Berlin in the wake of World War I with vampires, magicians, and inexplicably time traveling David Bowie, the third an occult mystery in the back drop of the end of the world — Death in Trieste is a charmingly melancholic book.
Throughout the book, Jason utilizes the four panel grid typically seen in comedic stories while retaining the melancholic edge that makes his work worth returning to again and again. Perhaps one of the most notable moments of this comes when David Bowie is accosted by Brownshirts for having a rather queer sense of gender. A simple two page sequence keeps its distance, allowing for the startling horror of the moment to ring true for all to see.
And yet, the absurdity of the moment — that being a humanoid dog version of David Bowie being beaten up by dog Brownshirts — remains true. It never breaks down into crass humor, but rather engages with one of the story’s core interests: Dada. As the book explains it, “Dada is rationality through madness. It’s an abstract, primitive statement against art, against the world, against reality. And above all, it’s a kick in the balls to good taste and the bourgeoisie.”
This perfectly encapsulates the ethos of utilizing the funny animal format to tell melancholic stories about getting old and living in a collapsing, ever changing world. An absurd cosmos that refuses explanation, save for unsatisfying ones. And, you know, it’s absolutely delightful in doing so.
Death in Trieste is out this month via Fantagraphics
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