Anders Nilsen is on a quest as a comics artist to deliver his vision as well as he can to the reader. That’s saying a lot when it comes to Nilsen as anyone who is familiar with his work can attest. The new collection of his work is Tongues, Volume 1, published by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House, pub date is Mar 11, 2025 and you can pre-order. My review here. Once you enter this book, from the first page onward, you are transported to a sort of netherworld that leads you from one realm to the next, the worlds of gods and humans. Questions regarding existence and divinity are asked and answered as a common exchange.
We ran into a bit of technical difficulty and naturally opted to pursue an email interview. Basically, this is one of those interviews that allows for so much latitude in regards to approach given all the material that can potentially be covered. For this one, I thought it might make sense to do a bit of comparison between the two big books in Nilsen’s career with greatest overlap. And so we came up with what could have been over an hour of chat, perhaps over a couple of cups of coffee, distilled down to what you read below. I don’t take anything for granted and I’m very grateful for the time and care involved in Anders’s thoughtful responses.
Page excerpt from Tongues.
HENRY CHAMBERLAIN: Thank you, Anders, for doing this interview. I can only imagine things remain chaotic, one way or another, for everyone in Los Angeles.
ANDERS NILSEN: Yeah, it’s been a weird time. My wife and I did actually evacuate briefly. We lost power and internet on the second day of the fires, and then a new blaze popped up that evening in the Hollywood Hills, which is only a couple of miles away from us. So we went to stay with a friend in the far south end of the city for three nights until the power came on again. In the grand scheme of things it was a small disruption, but it’s definitely a weird feeling to have to decide in an hour or two what stuff you value most in the world. And our cats were very grumpy about it.
Page excerpt from Big Questions.
At the time of this interview, we’re about a month before the release of Tongues, Volume 1 (03/11/2024). Looking back at the time of the release of your other work of comparable size and scope, the collected Big Questions (08/16/11), how would you compare these two milestones in your career?
They are very different moments for me. Big Questions wasn’t the first book I published, but it was the project that got me started being serious about making comics, and I think of it as being my, like, 12 year graduate school in comics. That’s how I learned how the medium worked, basically, and how I figured out how I wanted to approach it. You can see it in the book itself – the early pages are sort of roughly drawn – partly on purpose, but not entirely. I was figuring things out as I went. Tongues on the other hand felt like “okay, now I know what I’m doing, more or less, here’s a chance to start out with something like command of my medium. I’ve still learned a ton working on this book, but I was a much more capable artist from the start of it.
Tongues is also a culmination for me. Every other book I’ve done has grown out of small experiments and messing around in my sketchbooks. Tongues didn’t. It grew out of those other finished works. There’s a way in which it feels like everything I’ve done in comics to this point has led me to this project. Everything has built up to this. So that’s also very different.
Poor Prometheus.
Prometheus is a titan in Greek mythology who commited the sin of helping (or creating) humanity with the gift of fire (knowledge). This provides a jumping off point for Tongues as you have a Prometheus story that continues and branches off from the original. You explicitly have humanity gain the gift of language; and you have a Prometheus moving beyond his imprisonment from the gods. Would you share with us a bit about how you play and interact with the story of Prometheus?
Sure. I love that story. I know the basic version from reading that mythology as a kid, pouring over it. So the basic outline is sort of burned into my head. I did a short story several years back (in Rage of Poseidon) playing with the idea of his ‘eternal’ punishment extending into the present, as it reasonably would. And it touched on his relationship with the eagle that is sent every day to eat his liver. The eagle is his tormentor, but it’s also his only friend, the only other mind he interacts with. And in my work birds usually talk. So I was interested in that relationship. What would it be like? What a weird tension, right? Full of possibilities. And his traditional role as creator of humanity also allows me to get into human nature and evolution which I have a longstanding interest in. And then when I actually read more deeply, Prometheus’ story only got more interesting. Our basic conception of the story comes from the playwright Aeschylus in 480 BCE (or thereabouts). But his play, Prometheus Bound is only one of a trilogy – the other two are lost, we don’t even know if Prometheus Bound is the first or the last in the series. They are very sketchily understood from other contemporary writing, but again, what a great sandbox to get to play in, and to get to fill in the blanks with my own bastardized version. And then, lastly, there’s a tension with Zeus, the king of the gods, who arranges the punishment. Prometheus literally translates as “forethought” – he can see into the future, at least some parts of it. And so he knows which of Zeus’s offspring will come to overthrow him, and when – as happened to his father and grandfather before him. But he hates Zeus, and refuses to tell him, despite being tortured for eternity. So… yeah. Great material to muck around with.
If I tried to give a brief explanation/comparison of Big Questions (658 pages) and Tongues (368 pages), I would say that one book has the creatures of the gods looking up, trying to make sense of the gods; and the latter book has the gods looking down, trying to make sense of the creatures. Did things just work out that way or do you think your ongoing storytelling was leading in that direction?
Wow, that’s great, I actually hadn’t thought about that inversion in that way, but yes, that completely makes sense. Although in a way in Tongues, by the present, the humans have, in a way, surpassed the gods. Though only in a way. But yes, I think both books are trying to play with, to conceptualize a relationship to divinity, to the universe, to the very strange fact of being alive in the world. And it only makes sense to come at it from both directions, eventually. And I guess in Tongues, one of my favorite characters is the Eagle. And she’s trying to understand both.
Of course, Tongues has been brewing and evolving, in one form or another, over many years, back to, in small part, Dogs and Water (2005) and, more explicitly in Rage of Poseidon (2013). Would you share with us a bit on the building blocks that you were working with back then and how they proved to be part of something bigger?
The connection with Dogs and Water is a good story. So D+W was my first published book, and out of everything I’ve done, for some reason it has had the most random interest in the film rights. For several years after it was published I would get random emails from rock stars or people in film about turning it into a movie. Usually it would be one or two emails and then they would disappear and the idea wouldn’t go anywhere. But in 2009 or so a Canadian production company got in touch and it got far enough that I agreed to write a script for a feature. The book is honestly not that substantial, so it involved adding some new material. There’s one scene in the book where the main character, a young man with a teddy bear strapped to his back, lost in the middle of nowhere, is passed on the road by a sort of military caravan. These Canadian filmmakers suggested expanding that scene, maybe having one truck stop and having some sort of interaction. Which I was interested in. So I wrote that scene into the script. Well, the movie went nowhere, but that scene stuck in my head. I really liked it. And disliked that it would never see the light of day. So years later when I was beginning to think about a new long-form graphic novel I decided to incorporate that scene. It’s the first thing in Tongues that I actually drew. It’s funny, though, it’s the same character, but in a sort of alternate world. And the bear on his back is not the same bear.
Part of assembling the elements of Tongues was very much a process of throwing obstacles down in my path to just see what would happen. I was specifically interested in dumping this D+W thing in with Prometheus, and human nature and the tensions of the middle east, etc etc. They didn’t really make sense together, but it felt like something interesting might arise out of that tension.
Incidentally a short film was eventually made from the final quarter or so of Dogs and Water by a director named Randy Krallman. But again, basically no one has ever seen it. It’s beautifully shot. But will probably never be seen, sadly.
Reading Tongues is such a pleasure. It is an understatement to say that it brings together all of your strengths in comics art. Looking over pages, I want to point out a few like the two-page spread (p116-117) which depicts Astrid and her father walking around the mall and engaged in a very serious conversation. Recently, I stumbled upon the comics term, the De Luca Effect. Is that familiar to you? I’ve discovered that some of the greatest cartoonists using this technique are not familiar with the term. Basically, it’s a way to have one (or more) characters inhabiting different moments in the same space. My guess is that this is simply something that emerged during your process. In fact, your use of it includes “panels,” which technically would not be used in this technique. All very theoretical stuff!
Oh, that’s cool, no I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term before. But I love doing that in certain places. It feels like it breaks up time in a slightly different way than normal panelling. Slows it down, or makes it slightly quieter, or more meditative, potentially. Although I’ve probably used it in other, more kinetic ways, too.
That brings me to your own very distinctive use of panels. Heck, I would call them the Nilsen Effect! Would you share with us a bit about your use of polygons and the like?
Sure, yeah, panelling was something I was very much interested in playing with in Tongues. I’m interested in panels in comics as ‘frames of experience’. So, like, the structure and arrangement of panels influences the way a reader reads a scene. And how the scene feels This is obvious in a way, but it’s not really exploited that much. Regular squares or rectangles are an easy way to break up action, but they also have an effect on the reader. In Big Questions I found that regular, repetition of evenly spaced square panels helped create a regular rhythm which was useful for, say, conversations between two birds, where there wasn’t a lot of action. They were great for that. In D+W I did the whole book without any panel borders. And that had a very different, very particular effect on the feel of the story. It emphasized the open blankness of that landscape, and it had an effect of making it feel (I think) a little less like your focus was being dictated by the author. It felt more open. For Tongues I wanted to try some other stuff. In particular I wanted it to feel like the structure of each page was almost an object unto itself. And to echo the unfolding feel of the ‘magic cube’ in the story. This becomes more explicitly about the structure of reality when Astrid has her ‘audience’ in the underground pit and the dream/hallucination that follows. And then there’s the Prisoner’s Dream sequence at the beginning of the book. One reviewer described it as the ritual reading of entrails. Which I love. I hadn’t thought of that, but I wanted it to feel like a kind of magical ritual state. And also like a dream. The framing of panels with animal forms, or the plant forms of Prometheus’ ‘garden’ feels to me a little like framing lyrics with music in a song. It’s a literal marrying of two different sides of the brain in that context. Which automatically is going to deepen things and give it texture and tone and weirdness. It’s a tool.
If you will bear with me, I also wanted to point out the fascinating progression of your comics art in Big Questions. You reach a point, where you start to make use of the two-page spread and never look back. I hope that makes sense. I’m just saying that, at some point in your evolving as a comics artist, you saw the full potential of the two-page canvas and made it your own. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s cool, yeah, I like to throw in a good two-page spread now and then. I feel like I should be more conscious than I am of the spread as a unit, rather than the single page. Because that is the visual whole that the reader encounters when they turna page, really. But it’s also good to be able to have the two-page spreads break up the rhythm of the sequence of pages. To establish rhythms and then occasionally break them. Just one more thing to play with.
Also, it appears that you made use of an original page size format that was about twice or less bigger than the printed page. Your originals are (or were) on 11″x14″ bristol. Do you still use that size or have you bumped up to something bigger? I noticed that, as you evolved, your lettering got a little smaller while the compositions and characters appear to take up more space than can easily accommodate your original page size unless, of course, you simply refined your process.
That’s incredibly perceptive. Yeah, my originals are bigger now. The first issue of Tongues was a little all over the place, but at this point my original pages are 12.5″ x 17″. So about 150% of the printed page. Roughly. Sometimes the page has to get expanded a bit. As for the lettering… don’t look too closely. The size changes a bit here and there. There are some things I could probably be more systematic about. But… maybe some day.
Another process question I must ask is all the production upgrades you made in Tongues, compared with Big Questions. That said, once you catch your stride in Big Questions, the improvement is apparent. Just the inclusion of those amazing geometric patterns alone indicates more and more dazzling art up ahead. And then you take things further with your own distinctive use of color. Not only is it a sophisticated color palette but you push boundaries, as on page 133, daring to have black text rest on such a dark purple background–and still be fully readable. I can only imagine that your own fine arts background compelled you to take on the role of a colorist, and at such a high level of complexity. What can you tell us about your coloring and production work?
Yeah, when I was getting started I had friends ask why I wanted to use color. Like, what’s the point? And… I don’t know, partly I just wanted to do something I hadn’t done before. And I did go to school for painting once upon a time, like you say. And color can convey a lot (obviously). I love doing the color, but it is also a TON of work. I’ve had folks helping out for most of the book, but that can get very expensive. It’s part of the reason I have only been able to do like 50 pages a year. But yes, I love the way I can suggest light and atmosphere, darkness and backlighting. It adds so much. And some of the artists that I admire most have been great colorists. Moebius, Herge, Chris Ware, CF, Sarah Glidden. After Tongues is done I might never do a full-color comic again. But I’m in it for now, more or less happily.
You have said that you had to make a choice between “artist” and “cartoonist” and you chose the latter. That said, I wonder if you’ve come around to accepting yourself simply as an artist. Whatever the case, your work is extraordinary and you have every right to embrace the role of artist.
Thanks. Yeah, I do think of myself as both. I probably use the words depending on the context and who I’m talking to. Or who I’m trying to get paid by, maybe. I definitely see what I do as wider than just comics, but it’s the comics world that embraced my work early on, and I’m very happy with that label, and being connected to that tradition. But I also think of myself as a storyteller and a book designer and a drawer and… probably a few other things.
I would add that I understand the hesitancy in calling oneself an artist. I also come from a fine arts background and I also reached a point where I needed to seriously pursue comics. And yet I still love to draw and paint, as I’m sure you do. We are both of a certain vintage where a fine arts major was the only game in town, no comics diplomas, and I think that’s all just fine. Who knows, perhaps younger art students will be secretly creating paintings outside of their comics curriculum! I believe things have sort of come full circle with the comics medium elevated well into the “art-academic complex,” as I sometimes call it.
Yeah, comics had definitely not penetrated academia when I was a student. I had to push upstream a bit to do them. Then when I taught for a couple of years I sometimes wished that my students weren’t quite so focussed on a single medium. And I feel the same way about the publishing industry at times, too, or maybe the market. But the world is what it is, and I’m happy to have found a place in it from which to occasionally push against boundaries.
I will ask just a couple of more questions and please feel free to add anything I might have missed. Essentially, what I get from Tongues is that the gods usually are not concerned with the humans unless the humans make themselves an inconvenience or outright danger. For me, the whole book is operating in this sort of timeless god-time. Of course, the “present time” rears its head, as in the mention of smartphones and social media.
Figuring out how to deal with the passage of deep time has been one of the really fun problems to play with in this book, for sure, specifically Prometheus’ long sleep. There’s definitely a certain suspension of disbelief I am asking of my readers in that regard. Our brains aren’t really built for geologic time, of course, or even the sweep of human history, which is a tiny fraction of it. Its almost a kind of absurdity to try and make a graphic novel about such things. But it’s been fun to try.
I realize that the evolution of the whole Tongues narrative has been years in the making. Are you satisfied with it so far and can see pursuing it further? There are certainly numerous reasons to continue, and at the pace you’ve been going too. That opens a whole discussion on creating work as a series. Basically, it seems the stage is set for you to do whatever works best for you.
Yeah, the story is only half done. Volume 2 is underway. So I’m committed to another few years, at least. Thankfully Pantheon has been very open to me self-publishing the individual issues as I go, which is a huge help. It’s such a lot of work, its good to break the deadlines up.
Lastly, as we embark on this year and beyond, with its many challenges, I find that seeking out the transcendent is a path that will recharge one with clarity and strength for the struggles ahead. If you would like to share any spiritual reflections, please feel free to do so.
Yeah, the next few years are going to be a lot. I don’t know that I have any special wisdom, but I’ve been paying attention to my breathing lately. Which is sometimes tremendously helpful. And I am very lucky to live near Griffith Park in Los Angeles. It’s a big semi-wilderness in the middle of the city. You can lose yourself there and cross paths with coyotes and deer and owls and crows. It’s a gift as far as I’m concerned. It has been a huge positive in my life, creative and otherwise. Watching the changes in light and weather and vegetation between day and night and season to season, feeling the deep quiet of the place… it helps make this insane world bearable for me. It’s finally been raining a bit here lately, after the fires. I’m excited to get to watch the park bloom and turn green again in the next week or so. I was up there last week after a difficult day and spent about 15 minutes watching two crows circle and chase one another in formation, continuously looping and surfing the updrafts. It was so beautiful to watch, and looked like such fun. I’m very grateful I have that.
Thank you!
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