Mute Swan/ Trumpeter Swan

In Mute Swan/ Trumpeter Swan, Stephen Trothen and JP Gosselin tell the story of two days in the life of a digital archivist at Voyager Inc. Inspired by the real life slaying of a mute swan in Stratford Ontario in 2010, this beautifully drawn comic attempts to come to terms with a digital culture that paradoxically brings closer that which it simultaneously threatens to pull apart. The comic, which also serves as the “sighttrack” to the album of the same name by Treephones, is told in a deceptively simple manner that is filled with references to pop culture (Charlie Chaplin), advanced mathematics (cellular automata and the Fibonacci sequence), religious iconography, and other easter eggs to Google after a first read. The result is a literate work of depth and grand achievement in collaborate and transmedia storytelling. Between the comic and the album, there is much to be discovered in this multisensory narrative experience. “…like Huxley’s version of Blankets.”