New talent Dakota McFadzean expertly negotiates the blurred lines separating small-town prairie life and the wildly surreal in his debut collection of short comics. The characters of Other Stories and the Horse You Rode In On (Conundrum) inhabit a world at once fantastical and hauntingly mundane. This is a land of faceless men, ghost rabbits, talking crows, faeries, drunken garden gnomes, invisible wedgie perpetrators and silently ironic spacemen, but it is also a world of horny teenagers, disappointing father figures, Facebook status updates and excrement on the kitchen floor. By McFadzean’s hand, Saskatchewan more closely resembles a scene from The Twilight Zone; one feels as Alice must have upon entering Wonderland: equal parts intrigued, charmed and terrified. With surprisingly minimal dialogue, McFadzean challenges us to ask, “What if?”—to take a closer look at our surroundings and to treat our imaginations with the utmost respect.  -Shannon Tien 

Bonobos, the ...