Low Moon

The longest American book to date (and first hardcover) from Norwegian comics master Jason, Low Moon is actually a collection of five marvelously deadpan short stories. The expressionless anthropomorphic animals who populate his comics milk understatement for all the laughs it's worth; they manage to look bored and detached even when they're brandishing swords or exploring alien planets. (Within the context of one of these stories, Yeah, sure. Why not? is a punch line.) The core of Jason's breed of humor is his protracted silences—the uproariously uncomfortable moments when his characters are standing around waiting for disaster to strike. A couple of these stories are one-joke twist-ending pieces about the intersection of lust and murder, but the other three are keepers. Low Moon itself, initially serialized in the New York Times Magazine, gnarls every convention of the western into knots—the sunrise showdown is a chess match, for one thing, and a bar fight breaks out over an inferior cup of espresso. & presents parallel tales about two people who do terrible things to get what they think they want. And You Are Here is another genre-bender, a decades-spanning micro-epic about a damaged family alternating between domestic drama and impossibly low-key space opera.