Chrysanthemum Under the Waves - Maggie Umber

Chrysanthemum Under the Waves  by Maggie Umber / 300-page paperback, 6 x 9.5 inches, published in 2024

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In the nine comics collected here, Maggie Umber grieves for the loss of her former self – a wife, a co-founder of a successful publishing company, and a person with good health living in a pre-pandemic world. Over the course of nearly 300 pages, she says goodbye to all she held most dear. In Chrysanthemum Under the Waves, Umber uses the demon lover theme, first as a way to hold on to her past, and finally, as a way to let it go.

"A tour-de-force silent interpretation"--Floating World Comics

"Feel the loudness of splatter and smudge. It howls and simmers. It is a pleasure to feel these images, you don’t read them, you feel them. Gaze into the dark pool, the surface of a well of subconscious, like a crystal ball, shadows of dream and memory cast onto the page with brooding inkiness and deep texture. Multiple styles of drawing here but all of them simmering with emotion. Magical feats of comics communication within these stories, beautiful tricks of mark making expressing what cannot be said. I really love this book, very much."--Lale Westvind

"Maggie Umber has one of the most distinctive and unique cartooning styles in comics , and she now presents us with her most ambitious work yet, a (mostly) silent horror themed work."--Austin English, Domino Books