I admit… I’m sort of a huge, pompous blowhard when it comes to the strident truism “great art or not, a good story still needs good storytelling and plot!”

Yet here I am, just blown away by Swedish-dude Simon’s incredible collection of wordless paintings offered up in the “comic book” Flood, each page of which arguably provides ~1000 possible stories alone, if only one’s eyes merely observe a bit, so to speak.

https://i.imgur.com/Y79JkeC.jpeg

Simon Stålenhag (b. 1984) is the internationally acclaimed author and artist behind The Electric State, Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. His highly imaginative images and stories depicting illusive sci-fi phenomena in mundane, hyper-realistic Scandinavian and American landscapes have made Stålenhag one of the most sought-after visual storytellers in the world. Tales from the Loop was ranked one of the “10 Best Dystopias” by The Guardian, along with such works as Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. --salomonssonagency.se

https://i.imgur.com/OwErKyT.jpeg

Now me, as someone who’s arguably overly-fixated on post-apoc works, I love how Simon keeps playing with that definition:

“Perhaps we know these situations.”
“Perhaps they’re complete fantasy.”
“Perhaps we’re merely gazing through a muddy troposphere!”

https://i.imgur.com/geWNIcR.jpeg

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this tiny introduction to Simon’s work. There is his official site.