Pentti and Deathgirl

Pentti and Deathgirl are two separate narratives, making this book less of a graphic novel than two graphic short stories. The first focuses on the titular Pentti, a Finn who works on a farm with his brother and who exhibits the sort of homophobia from which it is clear that he is almost certainly gay himself. Everybody who knows him is terrified by him, and by the end of the story it becomes clear why. Deathgirl is, as you might imagine, a girl obsessed with death, but not her own – rather, other people’s. This results in quite a heap of tragedy, in what is a rather glum story, though a strange attempt is made at a happy ending. The art here is deliberately basic, but it still seems oversimplified. The stories are similarly simplistic, and as a whole this collection is too slight to really read much into, and doesn't work well as a whole. It might distract you for about 20 minutes, but after that, there’s no real reason to re-read. [Ryan Agee]