In All the Cameras in My Room,' Michael DeForge Doesn't Shy Away From an Absurd Premise

"Nothing is ever quite the shape or color we expect it to be in the comics of Michael DeForge. The Canadian cartoonist can draw a bubbly figure with a tiny head and 14 ab muscles that is, somehow, unmistakably a knight in shining armor. A zoomed in view of the left side of the Medieval Times page that shows the large gray and red figure in greater detail."

"He can draw a range of black spikes and make us see an electric shock. A zoomed in view of the top left page in the collage, revealing in greater detail the skeleton in the green goo surrounded by black spikes. A zoomed in view of the UNIVERSAL STUDIOS MONSTERS page. Even his typography is surprising."

"A six-panel comic strip of black-and-white figures on a bright yellow background. One figure seems to have a cat's face and ears but the body of a woman, and is wearing an old-fashioned nurse's uniform and injecting an actual cat on a table with a large needle. DeForge loves an absurd premise, but he tends to keep that premise grounded in details familiar to anyone who has held down a job or been on an awkward date."

"The combination of the ridiculous and the mundane is often very funny: One story describes a nonprofit that turns cats into automobiles to protect them from careless drivers. A four-panel comic strip of creepy, black-and-white images featuring basic human silhouettes wearing masks"

Comics feature overlapping pages with skeletons in green slime, red monsters reading books, and animal imagery under a NON-PROFIT heading. Medieval-themed scenes show figures entering a dark tunnel, including a knight-like character with exaggerated anatomy and armor. Visuals include electric shocks, varied black spikes, and unexpected typography. Universal Studios Monsters imagery uses a bright yellow background and six-panel layouts with black-and-white figures. A nurse injects a real cat with a large needle, followed by the cat driving on wheels with the text “MRROWR.” Nonprofit plots involve turning cats into automobiles to protect them from careless drivers, while other strips use masked human silhouettes in creepy, minimal scenes.

Read at www.nytimes.com