Julia Gfrörer’s new hardcover collects 30 of her short works exploring themes of sexuality and horror through the ages. She seems to be most intrigued by stories set in medieval-adjacent ages, but ranges all the way from the Stone Age to the present. The book compiles rare works previously presented in anthologies and self-published zines, but does not include the contents of her out-of-print Fantagraphics paperback novellas Black is the Color (2013), Laid Waste (2016), or Vision (2020).
Buy World Within the World: Collected Minicomix & Short Works 2010-2022I assumed the new book would mostly be a hardcover collection of her prior Fantagraphics releases, so was pleasantly surprised to instead find a treasure trove of other short works from various sources including her own continuing self-publishing. If you’ve read her prior books, the new book is very much in line with their themes, even as she experiments wildly with her various page layouts.
Her biggest departure from anything approaching a norm in her work is a parody of Frasier that imagines the characters in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse in Seattle, with Frasier still doggedly determined to broadcast his radio show. Aside from that, she mostly sticks to exploring power dynamics and taboos surrounding eroticism in repressed eras, occasionally incorporating supernatural elements including vampires and a randy lake monster. Many of the stories are surprisingly explicit, so tender-eyed readers are advised to avert their gaze.
Gfrörer sometimes packs so many panels into her page layouts that the end result occasionally resembles thumbnail sketches more than finished works. This is immediately evident in the titular opening one-page comic, cramming over 60 panels with eye-straining text into the book’s moderate 7” x 9” page dimensions. Even her more spacious works rarely dip below 9 panels per page, making this a rare case where the digital version of the book may be preferable for some readers due to zoom ability. Also, in a nod to the zine origins of many of the stories, various colored paper stock is utilized for select works, further hindering legibility. Thankfully, the book is slightly larger than her prior small novella releases through Fantagraphics, but an even bigger footprint would have been welcome to fully explore her linework.
Gfrörer’s writing is insightful, even as some stories seem to simply peter out rather than arrive at any particular destination. That’s partly due to the short-story format of the pieces, with little room to develop meaningful plot arcs, but there are enough longer works included to take the sting out of missed opportunities in the smaller tales. Her stories are fiercely original, and their brief formats here give them the feel of exciting lab experiments that could be fleshed out into longer-form works in the future. It’s a delight to explore the fascinating dark corners she’s mined in the past decade plus, her own bizarre world within our world.
