The Past Is a Grotesque Animal – Tommi Parrish

Tommi Parrish is an Australian trans cartoonist and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Balancing emotional honesty with a keen awareness of the human condition, Parrish navigates fear, loneliness, identity, body politics, queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-fluid nature of all human relationships. The Past is a Grotesque Animal collects over two dozen short stories of varying lengths, interspersed with ephemera from Parrish’s own life: diary entries, photographs, illustrations, paintings, and more.

Parrish’s autobiographical elements inform their voice as a writer and the ways their characters constantly find one another adrift in their own seas of experience, current situations, trauma, and desire. How those characters coexist, how they are complicated by outside forces, and internal ones, affect our hardwired need for meaningful connection. The book also showcases Parrish’s singular and assured visual style, blending clear lines, expressionistic character designs and gorgeously complex, hand-painted color.