2017, reprinted 2023
Stages of Rot is a deeply enigmatic comic that depicts the decomposition of a dead whale, not at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, but on an alien world where all manner of sea life fly through the air instead, the undersea biome coexisting with and layered on top of the surface. And because the whalefall is on the surface, humans are now one of the scavengers that feasts on the giant carcass.
Artist Linnea Sterte divides the process into chapters based on which human group is present and what they're doing, but we're only one small part of the process. Sterte shows us the fish, the fungus, the macroscopic single-celled organisms that arrive to play their own roles. You get a sense that you're seeing a series of close-ups on a larger picture, a whole functioning ecology that remains mostly out of focus and even out of sight.
Successfully communicating that feeling, of watching one step in the functioning of a larger machine, without ever zooming out to show the whole, is no simple task, I suspect. Done incorrectly, and I think it would seem too simple, or else like chaos, with no sense that it's guided by an invisible order. Keeping you, as the reader, with that tip-of-your-tongue feeling in your mouth the whole time, without ever telling you the word or making you feel like you simply don't know it, is kind of an incredible accomplishment. Scavengers' Reign was rightly hailed for doing something similar, and it had the benefit of animation, being able to show its processes in motion.
We watch as the flesh-eaters come to collect blood and meat, and to slay the 'pilot' who we're told is a human-looking homunculus who lives in the whales heart and guides its flight. Fungus begins to cover the whale and form the heart of a forest.
The bone-cutters arrive to collect their materials. One carves a diatom, which we're told live in the upper atmosphere where humans rarely see them, so that perhaps the statue represents a memory in the bone as much as in the mind of the carver.
The barbarians are next; called to the whalefall by a vision or dream. For them the journey into the whale represents something hard to define, perhaps the passage into adulthood, though I might be wrong. The forest expands ever outward.
The last humans to arrive, the entomologists, collect specimens of every kind of life that visits or emerges from the fallen whale. They catalog it all and fill a museum. They even resurrect the pilot, who lives in the museum for awhile, before flying away, to the highest part of the sky, to join with another living whale. The cycle is complete and begins again.
Sterte uses a limited color palette to give each chapter its own feeling, distinct from the others. The flesh-eaters and barbarians both have more pink and red, the bone-cutters and entomologists more yellow and green. The alternation feels like a cycle, like the turning of seasons, and feeds back into the sense of hidden order propelling the book. This is not an especially long comic, and it has very little dialogue, but it's very effective at communicating the mystery of the way bodies are reclaimed by the world after death.
Stages of Rot is a deeply enigmatic comic that depicts the decomposition of a dead whale, not at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, but on an alien world where all manner of sea life fly through the air instead, the undersea biome coexisting with and layered on top of the surface. And because the whalefall is on the surface, humans are now one of the scavengers that feasts on the giant carcass.
Artist Linnea Sterte divides the process into chapters based on which human group is present and what they're doing, but we're only one small part of the process. Sterte shows us the fish, the fungus, the macroscopic single-celled organisms that arrive to play their own roles. You get a sense that you're seeing a series of close-ups on a larger picture, a whole functioning ecology that remains mostly out of focus and even out of sight.
Successfully communicating that feeling, of watching one step in the functioning of a larger machine, without ever zooming out to show the whole, is no simple task, I suspect. Done incorrectly, and I think it would seem too simple, or else like chaos, with no sense that it's guided by an invisible order. Keeping you, as the reader, with that tip-of-your-tongue feeling in your mouth the whole time, without ever telling you the word or making you feel like you simply don't know it, is kind of an incredible accomplishment. Scavengers' Reign was rightly hailed for doing something similar, and it had the benefit of animation, being able to show its processes in motion.
We watch as the flesh-eaters come to collect blood and meat, and to slay the 'pilot' who we're told is a human-looking homunculus who lives in the whales heart and guides its flight. Fungus begins to cover the whale and form the heart of a forest.
The bone-cutters arrive to collect their materials. One carves a diatom, which we're told live in the upper atmosphere where humans rarely see them, so that perhaps the statue represents a memory in the bone as much as in the mind of the carver.
The barbarians are next; called to the whalefall by a vision or dream. For them the journey into the whale represents something hard to define, perhaps the passage into adulthood, though I might be wrong. The forest expands ever outward.
The last humans to arrive, the entomologists, collect specimens of every kind of life that visits or emerges from the fallen whale. They catalog it all and fill a museum. They even resurrect the pilot, who lives in the museum for awhile, before flying away, to the highest part of the sky, to join with another living whale. The cycle is complete and begins again.
Sterte uses a limited color palette to give each chapter its own feeling, distinct from the others. The flesh-eaters and barbarians both have more pink and red, the bone-cutters and entomologists more yellow and green. The alternation feels like a cycle, like the turning of seasons, and feeds back into the sense of hidden order propelling the book. This is not an especially long comic, and it has very little dialogue, but it's very effective at communicating the mystery of the way bodies are reclaimed by the world after death.
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