Tom Kaczynski

Kaczynski takes abstract ideas — capitalism, communism, or utopianism --and makes them tangible. He depicts and meditates on the immense political and technological structures and spaces we inhabit that subtly affect and define the limits of who we are and the freedom we as Americans presume to enjoy. Society and the individual, in perpetual tension. Once you've read Kaczynski's comics, it should come as no surprise to learn that he studied architecture before embarking on a career as a cartoonist. Beta Testing includes 10 short stories, most notably "The New," a brand new story created expressly for this book. It's Kaczynski's longest story to date. "The New" is set in an un-named third-world megalopolis. It could be Dhaka, Lagos or Mumbai. The city creaks under the pressure of explosive growth. Whole districts are built in a week. The story follows an internationally renowned starchitect as he struggles to impose his vision on the metropolis. A vision threatened by the massive dispossessed slum-proletariat inhabiting the slums and favelas on the edges of the city. From the fetid ferment of garbage dumps and shanties emerges a new feral architecture.

Beta Testing the Apocalypse

Christopher Brown

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse

Brian Evenson

Ed vs. Yummy Fur

Trans Terra is a mutant memoir that melds comics, politics, and philosophy into a heady brew exploring work, creativity, emergence of the new, and the possibility of utopia. The author's journey begins in the frigid wastelands of contemporary consumer culture. Like a surreal HMS Beagle, Trans Terra meanders through time and space exploring archipelagos real and imagined. Prominent stops include Soviet Siberia, Communist Poland, Plato's Atlantis, nineteenth-century New York, and Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Arriving on the polluted shores of collapsing global civilization, Tom K glimpses the faint light of utopia beyond the veil of Apocalypse. Taking cue from Salvador Dali's paranoiac-critical method, the author unearths improbable connections between thinkers as disparate as Ignatious Donnelly, Alvin Toffler, Rem Koolhaas, Slavoj Žižek, and many others. Translated into several languages, Trans Terra is a comic book manifesto for the post-capitalist-crisis world. Tom Kaczynski (a.k.a. Tom K) is an Ignatz-nominated cartoonist, designer, illustrator, writer, teacher, and publisher. His comics have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, Mome, Punk Planet, The Drama, and many other publications. Beta Testing the Apocalypse, a collection of his Mome stories, was published by Fantagraphics Books in July 2012. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his partner Nikki and their two black cats.

Tom Kaczynski

Books

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