Book Review: The Past Is a Grotesque Animal by Tommi Parrish

After two lavishly painted graphic novels, Parrish takes a step back to present an archival collection of short stories rendered in a variety of styles. The narrative impact varies across the unrelated stories, but the throughline is Parrish’s fascinating, unbridled artistic creativity spanning a decade between 2014-23. The new book also contains journal entries and personal photographs, presenting the most intimate and revealing work of their career to date.

The majority of the stories were originally published in 2014, providing a look at their early artistic experiments before the emergence of their trademark fully painted style honed in The Lie and How We Told It and Men I Trust. Black and white zine-style shorts are interspersed with color works, revealing longing, despair, and fumbling attempts to understand the human condition, clearly informed by their own trans journey. Indeed, some of the earliest shorts are startlingly signed with their prior name, a bracing reminder of the personal changes that occurred along with artistic growth. 

One particularly striking photo collage shows a progression of Parrish starting as a glam girl in a slinky dress with long hair and makeup, gradually removing layers of femininity to emerge on the other side as a short-haired, unadorned being closer to their current truth. Old family photos are included as well, dating all the way back to birth and including parents and friends. It’s exceedingly rare to find this intimate level of personal revelation on display in any form of media, giving readers achingly raw insight into Parrish’s personal background. 

Parrish’s distinctive painted art appears throughout the book, with many of the works rendered in colorful brush strokes. The longest story is also the closest in fancifully hued, fully painted style to their prior books, the 20-page “Sufficient Lucidity” from 2020, while earlier painted pieces tend to be inked prior to more conventionally shaded paint fills. 

Even the most obsessive of fans will not have tracked down most of these pieces from their original micro print runs, making the book an engrossing compendium of Parrish’s career to date. Above all, it’s wildly inspirational, exhibiting such a burning DIY ethos that any aspiring creators are likely to catch a spark.