Nod Away is set on a near-future version of earth. A deep space transport has been developed to take a small crew to an earth-like, habitable planet in a nearby system in an attempt to begin colonization/repopulation. The internet is now telepathic and referred to as the “innernet.” When the hub is revealed to be a human child, Melody McCabe is hired to develop the new nexus on the second International Space Station. Working within the structure of sci-fi, Nod Away moves back and forth between physical and psychological worlds, utilizing traditional and abstract storytelling styles to explore what consciousness could be, where it could possibly be located, and what function or point it might serve.

A disturbing literary dystopian science fiction debut set in a near-future Vancouver during a deadly insomnia pandemic for fans of The Leftovers Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same golden dream. After six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis will set in. After four weeks, the body will die. In the interim, panic ensues and a bizarre new world arises in which those previously on the fringes of society take the lead. Paul, a writer, continues to sleep while his partner Tanya disintegrates before his eyes, and the new world swallows the old one whole.

Vol. 2 moves away from the deep space transport where Vol. 1 took place and moves to earthly terrain, peeling back layers of Cotter's world-building to reveal the bigger picture of this graphic novel series in ways that upend expectations. Aveline Moiré is a headstrong but self-destructive young French woman. When she meets and moves in with a young artist, Walter Walker, little do they know that the wheels they set in motion may bring about the end of humankind. Working within the structure of SF, Nod Away moves back and forth between physical and psychological worlds. It utilizes traditional and abstract storytelling styles to explore what consciousness could be, its location, what function or point it might serve, and how a lack of personal responsibility and accountability will always corrupt it. At a projected seven volumes and over 2000 pages in all, Nod Away is poised to be one of the great comics classics of the 21st century.

Written during the trial for a close friend’s murder, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod exposes that the whimsical, horrible, and absurd all sit together. In this ambitious fourth collection, Traci Brimhall corresponds with the urges of life and death within herself as she lives through a series of impossibilities: the sentencing of her friend’s murderers, the birth of her child, the death of her mother, divorce, a trip sailing through the Arctic. In lullaby, lyric essay, and always with brutal sincerity, Brimhall examines how beauty and terror live right alongside each other––much like how Nod is both a fictional dreamscape and the place where Cain is exiled for murdering Abel. By plucking at the tensions between life and death, love and hate, truth and obscurity, Brimhall finds what it is that ties opposing themes together; how love and loss are married in grief. Like Eve thrust from Eden, Brimhall is tasked with finding meaning in a world defined by its cruelty. Unrelenting, incisive, and tender, these poems expose beauty in the grotesque and argue that the effort to be good always outweighs the desire to succumb to what is easy.

It's all out war with the Knightleigh family, and Edgar and Ellen are rapidly losing ground. But then everyone's attention is diverted by the ghostly hand of fortune: Augustus Nod has launched a treasure hunt from beyond the grave. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.