When it comes to beautifully illustrated, formally inventive comics, it doesn’t get much better than the work of Jillian Tamaki. She’s earned loads of acclaim for her graphic novels and shorter comics, and she constantly pushes herself to try something different with each new project. Her ambition is on full display in Boundless, a new Drawn & Quarterly collection that shows off Tamaki’s range as an artist and storyteller. You never know what direction Tamaki is going to go with her layouts, rendering, and story structure, and that unpredictability is a major part of this book’s appeal. She knows how to adjust her style to enrich the content of whatever narrative she’s trying to tell, and it brings a lot of depth to her work, particularly when she’s doing more introspective character building.
This exclusive Boundless preview introduces readers to “SexCoven,” a mysterious audio file that has a supernatural effect on its listeners. Originally published in Frontier #7, “SexCoven” was one of the best comics of 2015 (read Tegan O’Neill’s original review here), and now readers that missed out on the one-shot can discover the fascinating mystery Tamaki builds in this story. These preview pages highlight the structural innovation of the narrative, which is constructed from various sources whose separate accounts come together to form a dense mythology around this digital phenomenon. The true nature of “SexCoven” is ambiguous, and Tamaki gives readers bits of information that force them to draw their own conclusions, making for a very active reading experience. Combine that engrossing script with striking artwork and you have one phenomenal comic, and “SexCoven” is just one of many great stories readers can find in Boundless when it goes on sale tomorrow.