Cartoonist Cole Closser transcends time in new comic, Black Rat

In his new book Black Rat, Cole Closser exorcises some art demons from pre-war manga through to old American comics and Art Brut. Published by Koyama Press, the comic follows rats with hopes for immortality, studious characters entering voids into ye olde battle scenes and cakes ruined by earthquakes; all drawn in odes to traditions past.

In an interview with The New Yorker Cole describes himself as someone “nostalgic for times he never actually lived through.” In Black Rat he really puts his nostalgia to the test, walking between worlds and travelling through time “solving mysteries… amidst a barrage of butchered quotes and borrowed styles in a series of seemingly disparate, sometimes violently visceral vignettes.”