Norwegian cartoonist Jason has made so many great comics I’ve enjoyed over the years that it’s an automatic must-read when I see a new book from him. Although, given the quality of his last couple of books and now this one, I’m starting to feel like his best work is behind him, unfortunately.
Death in Trieste is a collection of three short comics. The Magritte Affair is a messy narrative about a gang of thieves stealing paintings and replacing them with copies of Magritte’s paintings while others end up dressing like him in bowler hats for some reason. The title story is a hodge-podge of things, one of which involves a magician using Rasputin’s skull to see the future (WW2). Sweet Dreams closes out the book where an asteroid headed to Earth brings mummies back to life and the only ones to stop them are ‘80s New Wave bands.
The Magritte Affair was unfocused and boring. Death in Trieste has the makings of a potentially decent story that Jason doesn’t realise. There’s the usual fun stuff you see throughout his books like time travel, action movie riffs, espionage, with pop culture figures like Marlene Dietrich and Nosferatu thrown in (Athos also makes a cameo), and I liked the idea of Rasputin’s skull showing the future. But it doesn’t come together satisfyingly. Sweet Dreams comes off like a crappier version of Jason’s earlier, far better comic, The Living and The Dead.
I still love Jason’s art which has always looked good to me - very clean, crisp lines, expressive and funny animal-headed characters and well-laid out panels. But, like his other post-COVID books Good Night, Hem and Upside Dawn, I just didn’t connect with Death in Trieste. 2020s Jason’s gone too far in the absurdist direction which has made his usually tightly-constructed stories feel meaningless and silly. So it is with Death in Trieste - disappointingly forgettable comics from an indisputable master.
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