Pyle, Nathan W
Entry updated 27 November 2023. Tagged: Author, Comics.
(1982- ) US television production designer, cartoonist and author best known for his popular webcomic Strange Planet, launched in February 2019 and set in a world of typically blue, hairless, Alien (though Pyle avoids this term) humanoids shaped rather like the traditional Alien Greys of ufological tradition (see UFOs). These beings constantly discuss or enact human quirks and human situations with the kind of Martian distancing made famous by Craig Raine in A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (coll 1979 chap), here with a specific vein of Absurdist irony that has also been compared with A D Condo's Comic strip Mr Skygack, From Mars (1907-1917). The Humour centres on Martian – in the Raine sense – terminology whereby balloons are "elastic breath traps", pizza is "vast dough circle" with "excess fungus slices", socks become "foot fabric tubes", sun-tan and sun-burn are both "star damage" ("I crave star damage"), and birthdays are celebrated with "This was where the planet was when you emerged". These normally four-panel vignettes are engaging if occasionally repetitive in their whimsy, and the first book collection Strange Planet (graph coll 2019) was a US bestseller. Follow-ups included Stranger Planet (graph coll 2020) and the Cat-themed children's picture book Strange Planet: The Sneaking, Hiding, Vibrating Creature (graph 2021); among the spinoffs are a Card Game and a postcard collection [not listed below]. An animated Television series based on the strip is Strange Planet (2023). [DRL]
Nathan W Pyle
born Kettering, Ohio: 1982
works (selected)
series
Strange Planet
- Strange Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2019) [coll: graph: Strange Planet: hb/Nathan W Pyle]
- Stranger Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2020) [coll: graph: Stranger Planet: hb/Nathan W Pyle]
- Strange Planet: Existence Chronicle (New York: HarperCollins, 2020) [graph: diary: Strange Planet: hb/Nathan W Pyle]
- Strange Planet: The Sneaking, Hiding, Vibrating Creature (New York: HarperCollins, 2021) [coll: graph: Cats: Strange Planet: hb/Nathan W Pyle]
links
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