Pieter Coudyzer is well known for his animation work, including the short films Treeand My Heart is not Here. Now, he’s turned his considerable talent to comics – and the results are astonishing. Outburst, released this month, is a disturbing, atmospheric and utterly absorbing debut graphic novel, part coming of age story, part contemporary fairy tale.
Tom is the bespectacled class nerd: introspective, clumsy and myopic. When he leaves his lunchbox unguarded, Tom returns to find it inhabited by ants. When he gazes at the cute girl in class, she responds by sticking out her tongue. And when it is time to partner up on a canoeing trip, he is left to paddle on the river alone…
At home, Tom finds solace in recordings of nature and the wild spaces of his imagination. But when he falls prey to a particularly cruel trick, this imaginative wilderness becomes rampant. It wants out. A moment of crisis marks the flashpoint of a slow-burning metamorphosis.
