“What if I fall?” worries the narrator in a stylized, faux hand-lettered type Wade’s Instagram followers will recognize. The Road’s twice-iterated response-“Be a leader and find out”-bookends a dialogue in which a traveler’s anxieties are answered by platitudes. Opening by asking readers, “Have you ever wanted to go in a different direction,” the unnamed narrator describes having such a feeling and then witnessing the appearance of a new road “almost as if it were magic.” “Where do you lead?” the narrator asks.

6-8)įrom an artist, poet, and Instagram celebrity, a pep talk for all who question where a new road might lead. The children marry, replace their fathers’ follies with a single connected house and raise a family: “Everyone lived well and happily, and they agreed that that was enough.” Drescher’s messily energetic cartoon style underscores the parable’s sardonic tone. Eventually McFig plunges to his death, after which McFly retires to his TV room, where he watches nature show reruns and expires from boredom. Meanwhile, their children Rosie and Anton grow up together and fall in love. This prompts McFig to add a playroom to his roof, and the race is on-culminating years later in two high, tottering assemblages (largely constructed of found materials) depicted in hilariously loving detail on a humongous foldout spread. Widowers McFig and McFly have identical cottages and are best buds, until McFly builds a tower on his roof.

Drescher doesn’t quite get around to the “revenge,” but he makes good on the rest of his title in this tale of neighbors who compete in building ad hoc additions to their houses.

Klutz by Henrik Drescher