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book cover for The Past is a Grotesque Animal

The Past is a Grotesque Animal

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Pub Date Oct 28 2025 | Archive Date Oct 14 2025

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Description

Tommi Parrish is an Australian trans cartoonist and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Balancing emotional honesty with a keen awareness of the human condition, Parrish navigates fear, loneliness, identity, body politics, queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-fluid nature of all human relationships. The Past is a Grotesque Animal collects over two dozen short stories of varying lengths, interspersed with ephemera from Parrish’s own life: diary entries, photographs, illustrations, paintings, and more.

Parrish’s autobiographical elements inform their voice as a writer and the ways their characters constantly find one another adrift in their own seas of experience, current situations, trauma, and desire. How those characters coexist, how they are complicated by outside forces, and internal ones, affect our hardwired need for meaningful connection. The book also showcases Parrish’s singular and assured visual style, blending clear lines, expressionistic character designs and gorgeously complex, hand-painted color.

Tommi Parrish is an Australian trans cartoonist and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary comics and graphic novels. Balancing emotional honesty with a keen awareness of the human...


Advance Praise

"No cartoonist working today does interpersonal drama as authentically as Parrish." — Four-Color Apocalypse

"Parrish is great at making panels that you can both read and linger over." — Dash Shaw (Bottomless Belly Button)

"Parrish has one of my favorite traits in a cartoonist: intense passion for the craft. They are rapidly evolving and experimenting wildly and it’s joyful to watch." — Simon Hanselmann (Megahex)

"No cartoonist working today does interpersonal drama as authentically as Parrish." — Four-Color Apocalypse

"Parrish is great at making panels that you can both read and linger over." — Dash Shaw (...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9798875001321
PRICE $29.99 (USD)
PAGES 220

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Average rating from 17 members


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