Lose #6

Nominated for the 2015 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Story "Canadian artist DeForge's anthology series is a showcase for his warped imaginings and offbeat, genre-bending cartoons." -- Matt White, Publishers Weekly "Stories about body horror, S&M, Canada; it's easy to call Michael DeForge the David Cronenberg of comics. But more specifically, I'd call him the 'noise rock' of the industry, and it helps that he's in a noise rock band." -- GeekRex "This is DeForge's best all-around effort to date, as his bleak and brutal sense of the absurd is coupled with surprisingly stirring humanism and drawn in a "stupid" line style that makes perfect sense." -- Rob Clough, The Comics Journal "DeForge's comic universe reflects the dark corners of our real one, but -- sensitive and hopeful storyteller that he is -- he hasn't forgotten about the exuberance, wonder and happiness there either." -- Chris Hampton, The Toronto Star "Heartwarming" isn't a word typically associated with DeForge's often unsettling work, but the main story in Lose #6, "Me As A Baby," is a surprisingly sweet tale about how far a "cool aunt" will go to make her niece happy ... It's really quite touching, as long as you're willing to forgive the string of dead bodies left by Cherelle [the cool aunt] on her path to triumph." -- Oliver Sava, A.V. Club "I don't know what Michael DeForge is reading these days, but I'll be damned if this isn't the 'Here's to Crime' issue of his ongoing comic book anthology series, undoubtedly the closest new thing we've got to the likes of Eightball or Schizo right now in terms of popularity and sustained quality." -- Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal "One of the most exciting and unpredictable cartoonists working in comics, Michael DeForge has a unique perspective that juggles humor, tragedy, whimsy and horror to create unforgettable stories." -- Oliver Sava, Los Angeles Times "DeForge's world is not for the squeamish. But it is one whose grotesqueries increasingly mirror, rather than distort, the mundane world with which we think we are familiar." -- Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail "Prolific young Canadian-born avant-garde artist DeForge has become one of his generation's most admired cartoonists, and this is his first sizable collection...While often willfully unsettling, DeForge's work resonates on many levels." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Laid out side by side, DeForge's sub rosa sense of humour is what comes through the most: it's so dry that it can slip by unnoticed in individual works, but taken as a whole, it's as stark and pointed as his lines are dripping and chaotic." -- David Berry, National Post "Everything and everyone in his [DeForge's] drawings is dripping, bubbling and developing unsightly growths. He warps and dents the assured, geometrical forms of vintage newspaper strips and new wave-era graphics into oddly adorable horrors; his stories are prone to whiplash formal shifts." -- Douglas Wolk, The New York Times

Michael DeForge currently lives and works in Toronto as a cartoonist, commercial illustrator, and as a designer for the hit Cartoon Network program Adventure Time. Past illustration clients include The Believer, Vice, New York Times Magazine, and The Walrus. His one-person anthology series Lose has received great critical and commercial success. Lose #1 won in the Best Emerging Talent category at the 2010 Doug Wright Awards, and Lose #3 won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic. Lose #4 was released in Spring 2012, and was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (or One-Shot). The fifth installment was released in Spring 2013. The 2013 Ignatz Awards saw DeForge take home three Ignatz bricks for Outstanding Series (Lose), Outstanding Anthology or Collection (Very Casual), and Outstanding Artist for his entire body of work.