Kevin Huizenga splits his time between Chicago and Minneapolis. He has lived near the Mississippi River for almost twenty years but only swam in it once. His favorite river is the Wabash. His character Glenn Ganges is based on his brother-in-law and the name is a reference to two separate towns that appear on the same sign on the interstate. The River at Night is his fourth publication with Drawn & Quarterly.
In The River at Night Kevin Huizenga uses the cartoon medium like a symphony, establishing rhythms and introducing themes that he returns to, adding and subtracting events and thoughts, stretching and compressing time. A walk to the library becomes a meditation on how we understand time, as Huizenga shows the breadth of the comics medium in surprising ways. The River at Night is a modern formalist masterpiece as empathetic, inventive, and funny as anything ever written. Image courtesy of Sammy Harkham.
See him at SPX in the White Oak Room on Sunday, September 15th at 12:30 pm in a panel titled “Hard Thoughts And Visual Metaphors.”