Retreat | Jaakko Pallasvuo

"Jaakko Pallasvuo has a gift for rendering the anxiety of contemporary life with complicated sincerity. He blends art-world satire and queer tragedy with a cosmic sensibility that can ruminate on ecological deep time and crack absurdist jokes on the same page. Retreat is his most accomplished comic to date: an ambitious, fully-realized post-apocalypse narrative in lush, impressionistic watercolour. Like everything he makes, I adore it." —Saelan Twerdy, critic

"Currently nothing excites me more than a new project from Jaakko. I don't care if he's making films, masks, comics or papier mache hats, I'm in for anything, but I'm very happy he's come back so strongly to comics over the past few years. I generally find his stories of 'pretentious groups of art-people' to be actually very unpretentious and quite matter of fact. I found RETREAT to be propulsive and full of emotion and 'social action'. It made me feel for the characters. It felt real. And most importantly: I LOL'd. <|:-) (i heard a rumour that james van der beek purchased the screenplay rights in a secret google hangout.)" —Simon Hanselmann, author of Megg, Mogg, and Owl

The angst, ennui, and malaise of the queer apocalypse sublimated to the equally ravishing graphic novel.

A gay couple flees the city from the impending apocalypse. They meet another artist on the way. Their clashing relationships, emotions, ideologies, hopes, and plans all transform unpredictably at the twilight of the human race. Jaakko Pallasvuo tells the convoluted and beautiful drama in the face of oblivion with stunning colors and visual and literal innovations in the way that are only possible in contemporary comics.

Jaakko Pallasvuo is a Finnish artist and novelist working in painting, sculpture, video, photography, books, and digital media. He has exhibited his work all around the world including Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Berlin, London, Paris, Stockholm, Warsaw, and Seoul. His previous graphic novels are Pure Shores and Easy Rider, both by British artist book publisher Landfill Editions.