By Steve Baxi — Young people are often told they are the future, that the world is in their hands. This is of course after the world has already been shaped by the sins of the old. So this is less a gift of the future and more a shifting of the burden. The appeal, then, of young adult fiction and why I think so much of it takes place in the post-apocalypse is that it makes this exchange of worldly duties more honest. Coming of age in a world that’s on its last legs is a feeling we all can intuitively understand, so there’s no sense sugarcoating it. While this formula has wide appeal as something empowering, to me it feels like an untapped well for pure existential horror. The Labyrinth - a narrative art book by Swedish artist, Simon Stålenhag - does not deviate from what one might expect the concept of a young adult post-apocalypse story to be, and yet uniquely dives head first into these uneasy feelings of horror and guilt bound up with the world we were handed.

I’ve never been much of a post-apocalypse or young adult fan. I have a very hard time investing myself in fictional worlds where society as we know it has decayed. And yet, I found myself paralyzed by every page of The Labyrinth. This is a thoughtful, efficient story that frightened and engaged me purely on the power of its mood and gentle descriptions. My mind was allowed to run wild on each image, only to be grounded in ways I didn’t anticipate with each narration. I would not recommend this story to everyone, but I had a thoroughly enjoyable experience with it.

Matt, Sigrid and Charlie are our windows into the remnants of a world plagued by disease, death and dehumanizing isolation. While there is some explanation of how the world became a wasteland, the narrative is more focused on how these three depend on each other to maintain the routines and expectations of their new subterranean society. Sigrid is our guide but more importantly, she is a bridge between the world we find ourselves in and the moral compromises of the world we left behind. She is not the pure, idealistic heroine of a young adult adventure, she is the inglorious byproduct of doing whatever it takes to survive. Her brother, Matt, shares this burden but attempts to project an air of optimism, almost nihilistic denial of the world as is. He constantly jokes with Charlie, tries to invite a playful atmosphere and ignores the complexities of where we find ourselves.

Charlie, a boy adopted by our two lead siblings, is an expression of the world itself. He is not the potential for a better future as much as the consequences of the past fully bloomed.. He does not have the luxury of compromising choices, or agency in the face of extinction. Rather, Charlie is the fate of this new world, the one who embodies the moral consequences of the circumstances handed to him. Charlie is distant and disillusioned, not the hope of tomorrow, but merely a reminder of yesterday.

Simon Stålenhag’s art is able to marry these disharmonies of past and future with his signature retro-futurism. The landscapes, vehicles and outposts are designed to be familiar, often taken directly from pictures of the Swedish countryside, but rendered lifeless, decaying, and invaded by the dehumanizing, immoral forces of technology. Every new piece of hardware is designed to solve a problem created by the last, and creating new problems along the way. As our characters journey across ruined cities and empty roads, we feel a Giger-esque techno-horror at the sheer scale of our mistakes. Our characters are often small, pushed to the side or in the center of objects that completely eclipse them. Every move is a move alone, every site is a reminder of our mistakes, mistakes so compounded by the past that we can’t even fathom where to begin in addressing them. 

Sigrid paints a fatalistic picture of her life with Matt and Charlie. The question of what one ought to do next is never addressed. Rather, the focus is always on how they make it through each day, what routines they’ve settled into, what we can expect because of repetition. As she details what happened to Charlie, what became of the world and what their family life is like, I felt almost like she was pulling needles out of open wounds to express their reality. My emotions were large, bouncing on each image with concern and curiosity. And each revelation felt like another puncture I had to deal with, another failing of their world, as well as a mirror to our own.

I would not recommend this book to everyone. This story does not have closure, or a finely threaded needle of plot to follow. The story is in the experience of studying each image, almost like Museum gallery work with a brief write-up on the corner. The story told in the descriptions is fascinating, but the real heart is in the images. If you’re looking for a traditional comic book narrative, this is not that. By the same token, if you’re looking for something concrete with clear symbols and emotional beats, this is also not that. This art book is an experience aided by meditative reflection on the genre it fits into and design choices of each page. The story comes from piecing together why Sigrid is drawn so small, why this house looks both old and new, and why these colors intensely shift your mood. 

I had a great experience with The Labyrinth. Stories that depend on my own interpretation are becoming exceedingly rare. Oftentimes, post-apocalypse stories in particular become lost in their lore, alternate history and faux reference material. So to have a story in that genre that leaves everything open, saturated with meaning while providing only minor guidance is both refreshing and emotionally exhausting. This is a story entirely told in its mood and design. As such, if you have the time to reflect on the art as art, I think you’ll come away just as engrossed as I was.

Graphic Novel Review: The Labyrinth

The Labyrinth
Writer and Artist: Simon Stålenhag
Translator: Ebba Segerberg
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $39.99
Visionary illustrator and author SIMON STÅLENHAG (THE ELECTRIC STATE, TALES FROM THE LOOP) presents a tense, dark tale of ruin and vengeance set among a stunning sci-fi apocalypse like you’ve never seen before.
An eight-wheeled vehicle trundles across a barren landscape of ash and ruined buildings toward a lone bunker deep in the wilderness. Inside the vehicle are three passengers: two scientists—who plan to use the outpost as a home base for the study of world-ending phenomena—and a boy named Charlie.
As the work unfolds, the isolation and claustrophobia of the compound threatens each member of the expedition with madness. Forced to confront their own dark history and the struggles of the haves and have-nots, the members of the expedition find themselves hurtling toward ruin.
Publication Date: November 3, 2021

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Steve Baxi has a Masters in Ethics and Applied Philosophy, with focuses in 20th Century Aesthetics and Politics. He creates video essays on pop culture through a philosophy lens and frequently tweets through @SteveSBaxi.