Penguins

In Penguins, musician and cartoonist Nick Thorburn (of the band Islands) crafts a short, surreal one-shot for Fantagraphics, following a group of Antarctic penguins whose mundane daily routines are disrupted by an inexplicable, creeping dread. With deadpan humor and stark black-and-white art, the 2018 comic turns the birds' stark environment into a quietly existential stage. It's a compact, atmospheric oddity that showcases Thorburn's distinctive voice in alternative comics.