Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan.
Tan follows up his amazing The Arrival with another unique look at modern society, this time focusing on the peculiar world of suburbia. Rather than one story, this book is a series of short stories or vignettes with a common theme. It is a cohesive book, but one that surprises in wonderful ways. Tan captures the odd and unique in a way that makes it all seem normal and every day. The tone is exactly right and the stories are utterly believable but at the same time magical and strange.
The stories move from vary in the amount of images and text. Some are almost all text and others are nearly graphic novel amounts of images. Tan created a table of contents using stamps that bear images from the stories. I found myself turning back to the table of contents to discover what the matching stamp looked like. Just a glimpse of the whimsy and unique approach that Tan uses.
I was going to list my favorite stories, but they are the vast majority of the book. Each story stands on its own, but also contributes to the whole. In turn, Tan's art changes from story to story in both style and medium. He is almost chameleon-like in this book, yet his voice stays true and on target.
Highly recommended where The Arrival was popular. Make sure this gets in the hands of graphic novel fans and artists. Fans of Ray Bradbury short stories will also adore this. Tan writes with much the same spirit and takes similar risks in his stories.
