About God’s Brother and Other Fine Meats

When widower Anton breathes his last breath and goes looking for his wife Betty in the ‘thereafter’, nothing is quite as he expected. For one thing, he has to take a number and queue to get registered. Unfortunately he takes the wrong number, which turns out to have serious consequences. The demonic civil servant St. Collector comes after him. Luckily, God’s big brother Guido, Devodius the man-bird and Marcel the couch animal come to Anton’s assistance.

Jan Truyens’ debut is nothing less than an art project. As a reader you want to absorb the story and all of the details at once. Truyens works in pencil, watercolours, acrylics, ink, colour pencils, marker pens, crayons, gouache, collage and photographs. For one scene in the comic he actually built a diorama, which he photographed and then drew pictures based on the photos. The different techniques and styles result in an enormously rich book, which is sometimes exciting, but also humorous and even tender, with nods in the direction of the ‘Divina Commedia’.