After Nothing Comes - Softcover

Koch, Aidan

4.17

180 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1927668328 ISBN 13: 9781927668320

Publisher: Koyama Press, 2016

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Aidan Koch makes comics about moods and moments, marks and symbols. They are drawn in a diaphanous, haptic style that suggests dreams and memories. In washes of ink, pencil smudges, white paint, and traces of drawings removed, Koch creates resonate tone poems on paper.

Aidan Koch was born in Seattle, Washington and currently lives and works in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. She works in a variety of mediums, often blurring their conventions. Her work has appeared in a variety of exhibitions, as well as the Paris Review.

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About the Author:

Aidan Koch was born in Seattle, WA and currently lives and works in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in Illustration at the Pacific NW College of Art in Portland, OR, and works in a variety of mediums, often blurring their conventions. Her work has appeared in a variety of group exhibitions, as well as The Paris Review. Past books include the Xeric Award winning The Whale (Gaze Books, 2014), Field Studies (Floating World Comics, 2012) and the anthology Astral Talk (Publication Studio, 2011), which she edited.

Review:

One of The Globe & Mail's 100 Best Books of 2016

Listed as one of the best graphic novels of all time by Thrillist

"The pieces contained are image-word play, briefer and longer poems and narrative bursts examining the nature of disconnectedness and loneliness." ― Tahneer Oksman, The Comics Journal

"Aidan Koch's collection of out-of-print mini-comics, After Nothing Comes, reads more like poetry or non-narrative art than a conventional comic." ― Shea Hennum, Paste

"Comics as poetry, comics as painting, comics as dance―Koch's diaphanous, impressionistic work opens up vast and unexplored possibilities for the medium, all while attuned to minuscule details." ― Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail 100 Best Books of the Year

"Koch's figures at times recall Edgar Degas's elegant pencil studies, at others Henry Darger's strange pinup children." ― Danica Novgorodoff, Artforum

"[T]he sheer minimalist restraint and stunning draftsmanship of polymath artist Aidan Koch's comics, many of which are contained in this collection, mark her as the medium's poet laureate." ― Sean T. Collins

"[After Nothing Comes is] best approached as a poetry chapbook, offering nothing but sections of Koch's soul in an attempt to make contact with parts of her reader's." ― John Seven, The Comics Beat

"After Nothing Comes is the perfect title for this collection because it is where the stories happen, when one is left to contemplate and make sense of the blank space." ― Rachel Davies, The Comics Journal

"This is the artist transforming the idea of comic books." ― Rebecca Bates, Nylon

"Koch forces readers to construct their own meanings, creating worlds on the page that remain radically, invitingly open." ― Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail

"At its simplest, [Koch's] use of synecdoche acts as a visual shorthand, where the part acts as a symbol pointing to a single meaning, but much of what makes Koch's comics so compelling is the way they lean on the fragment's aleph-like openness to infinite possibilities and perspectives." ― Chantal McStay, BOMB Magazine

"With her rich, evocative artwork and compelling, poetic storytelling, Aidan Koch is one of the most fascinating cartoonists working today, and the new Koyama Press graphic novel After Nothing Comes traces her evolution by collecting six of Koch's out-of-print zines from the last eight years." ― Oliver Sava, A.V. Club

"Aidan Koch rearranges the horizon." ― Scott McCloud (The Sculptor,Understanding Comics)

"Aidan uses few words to convey great feeling, and she often leaves blank spaces in panels. The reader is able to fill in the blanks, and to make the story their own." ― Rachel Davies, Rookie

"Aidan Koch's work is profound and unique. Few cartoonists have such equalized sensitivity to visual detail, social detail, symbol, sound, and story as she does. She will be remembered for creating a new form of attention. The art form itself is suffering shock waves from this earliest work. It fires my body and brain with alertness." ― Tom Hart (founder of Sequential Artist Workshop, author of Hutch Owen, Rosalie Lightning)

"Gossamer pencil rendering, conspicuous gaps in both image and text, a tendency to put just enough on a page and no more―these techniques give Koch's comics a sense of whispered mystery and melancholy." ― Sean T. Collins, The Comics Journal

"Aidan Koch asks us to consider the ways in which comic art and 'Art World' art exist separately and how they unite." ― Monica Johnson, The Rumpus

“[After Nothing Comes] minimal approach to the comic format encourages readers to piece together stories using only fragments of images. It’s a compilation best suited for an afternoon of quiet reflection and the perfect read for a lazy summer day in August.” ― Natalie Craig, Scout Magazine

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