Tongues Supplement

Tongues Supplement #1 is a 33-page, full-color oversized comic that functions as an intimate addendum to Anders Nilsen’s decade-spanning epic, Tongues. Published through Nilsen’s NoMiracles Press imprint in late 2024, it won both Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Comic at the 2025 Ignatz Awards—sweeping two categories and confirming what small press enthusiasts had long suspected: Nilsen is operating at a level that few in the medium can match.

The supplement originated from a gap in the larger narrative. As Nilsen himself explains in the book’s author note, one of the tributaries that led to Tongues was the idea of the relationship between Prometheus and the Eagle who visits daily to devour his liver. As the six-issue series came together, a particular set of conversations between the two characters kept getting set aside in favor of more pressing narrative concerns. Then, at the end of issue #5, he realized the story had passed them by entirely. The supplement is the answer—two extended scenes that are very much Tongues canon, but set slightly out of chronological order, filling in the gaps between the main saga’s sprawling chapters.

The result is something uniquely intimate within Nilsen’s body of work. Where Tongues proper sprawls across Central Asian oil fields and postcolonial allegories, the supplement narrows its focus to two characters in conversation: the chained god and his winged torturer. The two scenes feature Prometheus and the Eagle talking about deep history and sharing glimpses of their own biographies—extended philosophical exchanges rendered in Nilsen’s signature full-color style, where honeycombed hexagonal panels and anatomical diagram layouts create a sense of ancient ritual. There’s also a brief third scene involving Astrid, the East African orphan at the heart of the larger saga, though Nilsen leaves its specifics deliberately undescribed.

Published at 9” x 12.25” with French flaps in the same oversized format as the main series issues, the supplement functions both as a collectible artifact and as essential context for the larger work. For those just coming to Tongues via the Pantheon hardcover collection, it offers a window into the creative process; for dedicated readers, it deepens the mythology in ways that reward rereading. It’s a testament to Nilsen’s patient, architectural approach to storytelling—the understanding that a decade-long epic will have tributaries, outtakes, and supplementary materials that are themselves complete works.

Perfect for fans of mythic graphic storytelling like Jeff Lemire’s Descender, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, or the philosophical density of Chris Ware’s Building Stories.

Created by Anders Nilsen.