BIO

Aaron Costain is a cartoonist and architect in based in Toronto. He is the author of the Expozine Award-nominated comics Good Neighbours and Calamity Coach. He is also a member of the disreputable jam comics collective Team Society League; their latest book, the Big Team Society League Book of Answers, was published by Koyama Press. Entropy was nominated for a 2011 Doug Wright Award Best Emerging Talent and the Doug Wright Spotlight Award in 2015.



IN PRAISE OF AARON COSTAIN

I think if all big questions were asked in such an excellent mix of humour, terror and surrealism, I’d want to get to the bottom of a lot more mysteries. I loved every page.

– Kate Beaton, author of Hark! A Vagrant

I absolutely love the way it looks. The series wasn’t on my radar beforehand, but a certain print caught my eye as I was walking by the table, and I ended up leaving with both the print and all four collections of the comic that he had on hand.

– MTV News

Costain’s black-and-white art is a wonder to behold, distinguished by precise, detailed lines. But he also has an exquisite feel for design, composition, and good old-fashioned cartooning, knowing when to keep it simple and when to provide weight by adding texture and depth. There’s weight in the subject matter as well, with its exploration of basic existential questions. But while that subject might seem suited only to serious book-club discussion groups, Costain is able to strike a palatable balance through humor—as when a dog, held up as an example of the limited helpfulness of talking animals, recounts absently: “I barfed up some meat I ate yesterday. Then I ate that.” The book’s ending offers food for thought, and is open to interpretation as the conclusion of the search described in its pages, or as the renewal of yet another cycle. Entropy is entertaining and bizarre, but also deeply contemplative. It’s a unique offering that compels multiple readings.

– Foreword

In Costain’s telling, the journey through an isolated landscape compiled of religious mythology distilled to the essence isn’t much different from any typical post-apocalyptic adventure. But instead of this post-apocalyptic world being a result of our science going wrong or nature revolting against us, it’s created from our mania for explanations crowding us out. There are no humans in Costain’s world because there is barely room for them — there’s really only space for our ideas, which is just so much grasping into the vacuum. We’ve been defeated by our own desperation to explain ourselves and our universe, and the psychological clutter created by it all. If entropy is an inevitable disorder in the universe, Costain suggests that it is created by the human desire for order — and that is the creation we should be concerned with.

– Comics Beat

Aaron Costain eschews witless gloss in favour of economy and nonetheless offers an immersing experience… …As a cartoonist, Costain appears to intuitively grasp the medium’s ability to act as a receptacle for outside thoughts and impressions. He gives the reader ample room to breathe, and, in doing so, lends his work a certain depth. In one of his encounters, the golem refers to the work of Haruki Murakami; though removed from Murakami in many ways, Costain has a similar talent for telling dream-like stories without the tedium that usually accompanies other peoples’ dreams.

– Broken Pencil

This is a brutal story that leaves you cautiously eyeballing your own cats as they slink through your house.

– Size Matters

Costain likes to take his time and make the reader think about the physical reality of both mundane and highly strange activities.

– High-Low

In his intricately rendered line work, Costain assembles a strangely absorbing self-contained universe. This book is beautifully packed with creation myths, talking animals, and vast, sweeping landscapes.

– Jesse Jacobs, author of Crawl Space and Safari Honeymoon

I’ve had the pleasure of watching this book grow, with Aaron, through the years into a sprawling meditation on spirituality and nature. I loved it.

– Matt Forsythe, Adventure Time, Ojingogo


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