The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City Grifters, Book One

Australian cartoonist Grant’s endlessly inventive graphic novel plunges readers into a bustling, cartoony Mad Max landscape. In this environmentally devastated future, feuding brothers Lippy and Penn leave their swampy wasteland home and accompany their unreliable, entrepreneurial mother to Falter City, where she plans to open a yogurt business with her own hand-raised bacterial cultures. Everyone in the slapped-together trade port is trying to hit the big time, from algae prospectors to gamblers running illegal chicken (and sometimes alligator) fights. Most of the narrative is spent exploring this off-kilter setting, which is packed with jittery visual detail and populated with a cast of thieves, con artists, scavengers, and black-market dealers. The art, drenched in rich watercolors, suggests the squiggly-cute satirical style of cartoonists such as Tom Hart and Lat, but with unusual focus and precision. Grant draws irresistibly detail-packed cityscapes, muck-encrusted ghettos, nifty makeshift vehicles, and teeming crowds of skeevy kooks. As the loose plot rambles on, events get darker and the protagonists learn harsh lessons in the big city, where violence and cruelty lurk under an eccentric surface. This tragicomic adventure, a bit like an upbeat touring company production of The Road, is filled with desperate charming people scamming and ruining each other—it will hook readers and break hearts. (June)