Entropy

by Aaron Costain

Overview

Outrun giants, doppelgängers, angels and a slave-driving cat on an adventure through time to the origin of humanity in Entropy.

Aaron Costain’s Entropy follows a golem with a surprisingly modern sensibility, and an even more modern sense of style, as he backtracks through millennia to understand his own creation. Entropy takes place at the intersection of the world’s cultures. Mythologies and religions cross-pollinate, bleed into one another, and form a new soul from synthesis – or they will if our epic hero can outrun man-eating giants, a vicious army of crows, and one very manipulative cat. Entropy delivers an all-time adventure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996273985
Publisher:	Secret Acres
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.84(h) x (d)
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Aaron Costain is a cartoonist and architect in based in Toronto. He is the author of the Expozine Award-nominated comics Good Neighbours and Calamity Coach. He is also a member of the disreputable jam comics collective, Team Society League; their latest book, the Big Team Society League Book of Answers, was published by Koyama Press. Entropy was nominated for a 2011 Doug Wright Award Best Emerging Talent and the Doug Wright Spotlight Award in 2015.

Editorial Reviews

04/16/2018
Canadian artist Costain’s surreal debut follows a faceless and philosophical protagonist who’s in the midst of an existential crisis in a “posthuman” world. “Goddammit, who made me?” the being shouts into the void. “And why didn’t they make me right?” The anonymous humanoid’s much-maligned maker bestows him with one piece of wisdom: “Mustn’t mix and match mythologies.” But that’s exactly what the story does, following the hero’s journey through landscape populated by heavily symbolic beings (golems, ravens, coyotes, angels, and a sinister cat). The self-absorbed protagonist gripes about the undefinable nature of consciousness, references Haruki Murakami, and tries to muddle through what it means to be human. In contrast to the abstract, desultory storytelling, Costain’s line work is pin-point precise: an angel shines with exquisitely pointillist detail, and a forest’s shadows are a marvel of cross-hatching. Costain’s day job as an architect shows in his clean black-and-white compositions that carefully balance darkness and light on each page. Yet, despite how well the aesthetic is executed, the meandering story feels as jumbled and confusing as life itself. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"I think if all big questions were asked in such an excellent mix of humour, terror and surrealism, I’d want to get to the bottom of a lot more mysteries. I loved every page." – Kate Beaton, author of Hark! A Vagrant

"I absolutely love the way it looks. The series wasn’t on my radar beforehand, but a certain print caught my eye as I was walking by the table, and I ended up leaving with both the print and all four collections of the comic that he had on hand." – MTV News

"The book’s ending offers food for thought, and is open to interpretation as the conclusion of the search described in its pages, or as the renewal of yet another cycle. Entropy is entertaining and bizarre, but also deeply contemplative. It’s a unique offering that compels multiple readings." – Foreword

"We’ve been defeated by our own desperation to explain ourselves and our universe, and the psychological clutter created by it all. If entropy is an inevitable disorder in the universe, Costain suggests that it is created by the human desire for order — and that is the creation we should be concerned with." – Comics Beat

"I’ve had the pleasure of watching this book grow, with Aaron, through the years into a sprawling meditation on spirituality and nature. I loved it." – Matt Forsythe, Adventure Time, Ojingogo

From the Publisher