In 2018, Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag released a graphic novel called “The Electric State.” It flew under the radar for a lot of people, but for those who did pick it up, Stålenhag’s style of art was mesmerizing.
The book follows a girl named Michelle, and her robot friend Skip on a cross-country journey through an alternate reality in the 1990s to find Michelle’s long-lost brother. The novel doesn’t use a lot of words to tell a story, but Stålenhag’s art style, giving the reader a “show don’t tell” feel, which is a kind of storytelling that I personally love.
Stålenhag’s style combines the surreal with the mundane. In the world of “The Electric State,” America is post-war, but who the war was against, the book is vague about. It’s suggested that it was something of a civil war, but the war itself isn’t the…
