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Anders Nilsen Big Questions
by Dan
Graphica / August 16, 2011
Big Questions is cartoonist Anders Nilsen's newest book. But it is also his oldest, collecting together the mini-comic he first started in 1999 into a single volume.
The mini-comics took 10 years to complete, but as Ander's recently told Comic Book Resources, that was just the beginning a long process to bring them together for the book:
I finished the last issue somewhere around September-October and then after that, there was a good six months that was just editing. I think out of all of those pages, probably ninety percent or more have some changes, even if it was just moving a word balloon over or adding a word there. It turned into this giant editing process. I didn't redraw much. I added a few pages. I added one scene in the body of the book and then extended the material from the last two issues. I think I added ten or so pages to the end of the book. There were some deadlines which I did not quite make. I think the book was originally supposed to come out in May for TCAF, which did not happen. That process was just crazy labor intensive and it wasn't the fun part of coming up with the story and doing the drawings. When I was finally done with that, I was definitely exhausted and just slept for a couple days.
After all that, Big Questions, finally done, is over 600 pages long and a stunningly beautiful book. It is also now available from bookstores and Anders is touring to promote it. You can read a PDF preview at Drawn & Quarterly's website, but here are a couple of the pages from book to whet your appetite: