Anders Nilsen

Anders Nilsen has been quietly building one of indie comics’ most extraordinary bodies of work since he first photocopied and stapled together minicomics in 1999. Over the past twenty-five years, the Minneapolis-born, Los Angeles-based cartoonist has produced a string of books that range from intimate, grief-stricken memorials to epic, myth-spanning graphic novels—all rendered in a style that moves effortlessly from stark silhouette to densely hatched detail. In 2025, the comics world finally caught up with what small press regulars had known for years: Nilsen swept the Ignatz Awards, winning both Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Comic for Tongues Supplement #1, published through his NoMiracles imprint. The same year, Pantheon Books published the collected Tongues, Volume 1—a 368-page masterpiece that draws comparisons to Maus, Fun Home, and Persepolis.

Nilsen’s career is a study in patient, deliberate accumulation. He began self-publishing in 1999, distributing photocopied mini-comics at events like the Small Press Expo, eventually catching the attention of industry veterans who reached out—people like Craig Thompson, Eric Reynolds, and Tom Hart. His first book of note, Dogs and Water (2004), was an Ignatz Award winner, followed by the devastatingly personal graphic memoir Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow (2006), which won another Ignatz. The collected Big Questions (2011)—a decade-long, 600-plus-page meditation on philosophy, mortality, and a group of birds confronting an unexploded bomb—won the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize and landed on the New York Times Notable Books list. His work has appeared in anthologies like Kramers Ergot, Best American Comics, and Mome, and his illustrations have run in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Poetry Magazine.

Beyond his own books, Nilsen has been a pillar of the comics community. He co-founded Autoptic, a bi-annual festival of independent comics and art culture in Minneapolis, and helps organize the French collaborative residency Pierre Feuille Ciseaux at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. He holds a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction (2026) and has lectured at Stanford, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok), and the Center for Cartoon Studies. His approach to storytelling—“I really love storytelling that doesn’t lay it all out for you”—has made him a singular voice in the medium, one who trusts readers to sit with complexity and mystery.

Tongues represents the culmination of everything Nilsen has built toward. Drawing characters from his earlier works (Prometheus from Rage of Poseidon, the teddy-bear-toting wanderer from Dogs and Water), it weaves together myth, postcolonial allegory, and existential meditation into what critics have called “a landmark book not only in the history of the graphic novel, but in the history of mythic storytelling” (Max Porter). Volume 2 is already underway. Nilsen remains as prolific as ever, publishing through NoMiracles while continuing to push the boundaries of what comics can do.

Perfect for fans of dense, philosophically rich graphic novels like Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth, Jeff Smith’s Bone, or the mythic scope of Kent Miura’s Berserk.

Explore Anders Nilsen’s comics: Tongues Supplement, Tongues, big-questions, dogs-and-water, dont-go-where-i-cant-follow, the-end, rage-of-poseidon, poetry-is-useless.