Off Season

In this week’s Illustrated PEN Guest Editor Meg Lemke presents Off Season (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) by artist James Sturm.

Lemke writes: Sturm’s Off Season follows a man after his marriage has fallen apart, his construction jobs are going awry, and he can’t seem to keep it together for his kids. He’s seething with anger. And he’s also a dog, literally—the graphic novel’s narrative is told through anthropomorphic characters, the acute personal drama played out against the timeline of the 2016 election, and between the political divides within a family and a country. But what could feel like yet another Trump voter apologist pastiche becomes something much deeper and harder to bear, about loss and lost time. It was one of the first graphic novels of 2019 that I read, and definitely on my list of the best this year.

James Sturm lives in Hartland, Vermont, with his wife and two daughters, where he helps run a cartooning school that he cofounded, The Center for Cartoon Studies.

James’s graphic novels include The Golem’s Mighty Swing, Market Day, and James Sturm’s America. His other books include Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, The Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, Denys Wortman’s New York, and the popular Adventures in Cartooning series. James has taught and exhibited his work throughout the world.

His comics, writing, and illustrations have appeared in scores of national and regional publications including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Onion, The New York Times, and on the cover of The New Yorker. He is also a contributing editor and cartoonist to Slate and is a cofounder of the Seattle weekly The Stranger.