Tongues. Anders Nilsen. Pantheon. 2025. 368pp. $35.
Among the most anticipated works in comics for 2025, the collected Tongues (368 pages) by Anders Nilsen rises to the top. The other work by Nilsen that is similar in scope and content is the equally mammoth collected Big Questions (658 pages), published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2012. Both books are profoundly philosophical. While Big Questions is, more or less, pared down to focus on the entanglements of a few small creatures, Tongues bring in gods to ponder, and engage in, the fate of humanity. We may feel in our own time that we are at the mercy of the gods and so all the more reason to engage with this monumental work in comics.
Settling into this book, it charms you right from the very first page and I was instantly lost within its rhythms. While based upon three tales from Aeschylus, there is no need to fear any required prior knowledge. In fact, you may know more than you realize. Perhaps Leda and the Swan rings a bell. But, no matter. These are timeless, primal and utterly accessible stories. What does matter is simply allowing yourself to be swept away by Nilsen’s masterful storytelling: smartly-paced narrative inextricably linked to beautifully rendered artwork.
Nothing is quite right in Tongues. It is as if the world has been tilted off its axis just enough to cause recurring imbalance. The bad guys always have the upper hand and yet, as one god concludes, patience is a virtue. That is if you’re willing to wait around for at least a thousand years. Everything is relative. And so it goes as the narrative alternates between human scale and god scale. What is one death in the big scheme of things? And then another and another? One war bleeds into the next. Will a child lead the way? Ah, perhaps nothing so obvious. Again, it all comes back to the mysterious and enigmatic way this story unfolds.
Poor Prometheus.
Anders Nilsen’s career as an artist has been a gradual and steady progression. He first got on people’s radars in 2005 with his long-form comic, Dogs and Water. This was followed in 2007 with his heart-breaking account of the life and death of his partner, Cheryl Weaver, Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow. Look at the work going back to the early years and you find very simple drawing, even stick figure characters. The first section to his monumental Big Questions has its relatively rough patches with very simple drawings, yet always hinting at deeper sophistication. Today, Nilsen is at the very top, among the best artists working today, whatever the medium, without a doubt.
That brings us back to this latest book and Prometheus with his perpetual patience, sure that one day an eagle will suddenly tire of the daily punishment it has been tasked with of gutting him open and flying away with his liver. Specifically, Zeus punished Prometheus for giving humans the gift of fire. All very profound and fanciful stuff to be sure. Nilsen has an uncanny way of being able to evoke complexity, both human and godly, mired in a thousand contradictions. At his best, Nilsen manages to shed some light on the virtually incomprehensible. The fires raging in California can’t help but, at least for me, come to mind. Profound to the point of unbearable. Nilsen’s creative journey has been one of distilling the greatest pain and finding some artful consolation.
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