Death in Trieste

A Library Journal Best Book of 2025

The cartoonist known as Jason returns with a collection of three short graphic stories, connected by an absurdist thread, showcasing his idiosyncratic cultural obsessions, clear line style, and deadpan humor.

The title story, “Death in Trieste,” sets the scene in 1920s Berlin, a bustling cultural hotspot in the shadow of the coming Nazism. Here, a host of unlikely characters — time-travelling David Bowie, Rasputin, Nosferatu, Marlene Dietrich, and more — are all connected by a group of Dadaists who perform the art of rationality through madness. In “The Magritte Affair,” a wisecracking pair of detectives must crack a case involving art forgeries, masked men, and mysterious disappearances — all linked to the surrealist world of the famous Belgian painter. Finally, in “Sweet Dreams,” Jason reimagines the New Wave artists of the 1980s as X-Men-esque superheroes. While this supergroup easily dispatches such supernatural threats as living mummies, animated suits of armor, and rampaging golems, they soon face their biggest challenge yet, as a giant meteorite hurtles toward the Earth.