Off Season

A visceral story that you can see taste and feel. How could this happen The question of 2016 becomes deeply personal in James Sturm’s riveting graphic novel Off Season which charts one couple’s divisive separation during Bernie Sanders’s loss to Hillary Clinton Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump and the disorienting months that followed. We see a father navigating life as a single parent and coping with the disintegration of a lifedefining relationship. Amid the upheaval lie tender moments with his kids—a sleeping child being carried in from the car Christmasmorning anticipation a latenight cookie after a temper tantrum—and fallible humans drenched in palpable feelings of grief rage loss and overwhelming love. Using anthropomorphized characters as a tactic for tempering an otherwise emotionally fraught situation Off Season is unaffected and raw steeped in the specificity of its time while speaking to a larger cultural moment. A truly human experience Off Season displays Sturm’s masterful pacing and storytelling combined with conscious and confident growth as the celebrated cartoonist and educator moves away from historical fiction to deliver this longform narrative set in contemporary times. Originally serialized on Slate this expanded edition turns timely vignettes into a timeless deeply affecting account of one family and their off season.