A story drawn in the usual square panels will suddenly burst forth into a series of flowing, uncontained two-page spreads. A character who's drawn iconically, with just a few efficient lines defining her features, will become lushly realistic at a pivotal moment. She'll employ traditional comic-book techniques for page layouts and character designs, then toss them aside with the turn of a page. Som's artistic style breaks boundaries, too. Evading standard categories and unsettling familiar narrative patterns, the book is a testament to how trans experiences can teach us entirely new ways of imagining our humanity. But even when Som's not talking specifically about trans issues, Apsara Engine reflects what could be called a trans aesthetic. The cryptic, virtuosic "Swandive" explores trans identity, a theme Som - who is trans herself - has addressed before. Or maybe the other woman is just a stalker with a strong personality it's hard to say. In "I Can See It In You," a woman meets her boyfriend's ex, a mysterious figure who radiates occult strangeness. In "Meena & Aparna," a get-together between two friends is weirdly charged with unspoken tension - tension that remains unexplained even after it erupts. Intensifying the suspense, Som's people often do and say things that are a bit off-kilter. You might classify these comics as "literary," but Som's approach to storytelling is as uncanny as her style and themes.
Som intersperses tales of future civilizations and half-human hybrid beasts with vignettes of run-of-the-mill contemporary life, so the reader never knows if something odd is about to happen. Even the book's structure keeps the reader off-balance. Som's imagination is science-fictiony, without being particularly technological, mythic without being particularly traditional, and humanistic without cherishing any particular assumptions about where we, as a species, are headed. Its images and concepts seem to come from a place all their own. Even highbrow graphic novels tend to categorize themselves through the style of art they employ and the types of stories they tell.
The world of comics is all about genre - superhero, sci-fi, fantasy, horror - and most of the time it's pretty easy to match any book to its proper slot. There's something a bit uncanny about Apsara Engine, the new comics collection by Bishakh Som. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Apsara Engine Author Bishakh Som
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