Lilli Carre

The comics collected in Heads or Tails display a virtuosic breadth of visual styles and color palettes, each in perfect service to the story; they range from experimental one-pagers to masterpieces like “The Thing About Madeline” (featured in The Best American Comics 2008), to novellas like “The Carnival” (featured in David Sedaris’ and Dave Eggers’ 2010 Best American Nonrequired Reading). Carré’s elegant stories read like the gothic family narratives of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers. Poetic rhythms―a coin flip, a circling Ferris wheel―are punctuated by elements of melancholic fantasy, and are pushed forward by character-driven, naturalistic dialogue.

Heads or Tails

A haunting, lyrical graphic novel debut. A family is seduced by the song of the Creature from the Black Lagoon in talented young cartoonist Lilli Carre's first long-form work, and how each member reacts to the Creature's siren call in The Lagoon is the crux of the story. Carre experimented with nib pens and brushes while drawing this black-and-white graphic novel, giving the art a different feel from her previous, Eisner-and-Harvey-Award-nominated story, The Tale of Woodsman Pete. Lagoon was influenced by the films Creature from the Black Lagoon and Night of the Hunter, but reads more like the gothic family narratives of Flannery O'Connor. Rhythms - taps, the ticking of a metronome - are punctuated by silences that pace this "sound"-driven story.

The Lagoon

Tales Of Woodsman Pete

"Follow Tippy on a nocturnal adventure through mist, up a mountain, down a hole and back home"--

Tippy and the Night Parade

Hans Christian Andersen

"The Fir Tree" by Hans Christian Andersen, published originally in 1845, follows the life of a young fir tree living in the woods (of all places). Compared to the other trees around him, he feels small, spindly and short, and he constantly utters complaint to any and all woodland creatures within ear shot. Most pointedly, he wonders "when will he truly be alive?" When he sees humans cut down some beautiful trees nearby and then drag them across the snow, he asks the swallows, "Where are they going?" In answer they tell him of all Christmas's splendor and beauty of which those lucky trees will soon be a part. Yet when the time comes for our little fir tree to have his turn, he's taught an unexpected and irreversible lesson. No one is better suited to adapt this sweet and sorrowful tale than Lilli Carre. Creator of The Tales of Woodland Pete and The Lagoon, her sensibility will graft beautifully over the antiquated yet quirky tale by the great master Hans Christian Andersen.

Lilli Carre

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