The Many Deaths of Scott Koblish

The comic artist who’s brought Deadpool and Spider-Manto life imagines his death over and over in morbidly funny, four-panel black-and-white comics.

Marvel Comics artist Scott Koblish has been illustrating his own demise for many years. He’s the one person struck by a comet, suddenly overrun by a pack of baboons, resting under the precarious rock tipped by a single bird, or the target of his daughter’s (of course homicidal) teddy bear come to life. Though it’s always Scott on the receiving end, the comics perfectly capture that irrational feeling we all have that everything can go very wrong in one irrevocable instant. Slapstick, surreal, and eerily plausible, with extended scenarios and pops of color throughout, this collection of cosmic reckonings shows that, if the end is nigh, at least you’ll die laughing.

Praise for The Many Deaths of Scott Koblish

“Death by steamroller. Death by healthy cereal. Death by falling manatee. Cartoonist Scott Koblish has compiled the cheeriest memento morim you’re likely to come across—a series of wordless, mostly one-page comic strips in which Koblish’s bespectacled cartoon avatar dies. And dies. And dies and dies and dies. It should be depressing, this parade of merciless mortality, but Koblish’s style is so charming, his command of body language and facial expression so sure, and his imagination so twisted (watch out for that orange tabby, Scott!) that this funny, breezy collection ends up being one of the year’s most bizarrely life-affirming reads.” —Glen Weldon, NPR’s Book Concierge, Best Books of 2018

“In this . . . charming humor collection, DC and Marvel artist Koblish (Deadpool) draws himself dying in ways imaginative, mundane, and frequently impossible. . . . His action-comics style is simplified but lifelike, and the unfortunate Cartoon Scott is cute as he naively wanders into one dangerous situation after another like a video game avatar. . . . Fans will pick up this slim collection of cheerfully grim gags as a diversion between Koblick’s bigger projects.” —Publishers Weekly