BIG QUESTIONS (2009)

"(W/A) Anders Nilsen The latest installment of Nilsen's well-regarded series. The wounded bird Clay completes his slow crawl over the rim and into the bomb crater. There he finds the lonely and depressed Betty. The two compare notes on the cataclysm's effects, and are shortly thereafter descended upon by three upstart crows on a lark and mission of revenge."

"The interior of the airplane is surveyed. The Pilot emerges from his tent, going toe to claw with an admirer. He discards his toothbrush. Algernon sings a song. He and the Snake emerge from their hole and begin a trek back to civilization. The story builds bit by bit toward its climax."

"(W/A) Anders Nilsen Escalating tensions come to violence and conflagration. The Idiot and the Pilot come to blows and their partisans among the birds draw blood of their own. Not everyone comes out of the melee intact. Only a last minute intervention by an outsider brings the violence to an end."

"(W/A) Anders Nilsen The epic existentialist fable concludes. The pilot follows two swans underground, crows laugh and insult one another, and the dead walk. Anders Nilsen has spent much of the past decade working on this 600-page Ignatz-nominated series."