num_pages: 416
description: In his first new graphic novel since 2001's acclaimed Mail Order Bride  Kalesniko delivers an ambitious 416-page tour de force chronicling a single day - a few hours even - in the life of his recurring dog-headed alter ego Alex Kalienka. Stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on his way to his increasingly miserable job as an animator at Mickey Walt Studios a burnt-out and depressed Alex alternately rages reminisces fantasizes and hallucinates. There are flashbacks to his earliest days as a starry-eyed young animator snagging his dream job through the increasingly depressing political battles and creative compromises with a love affair gone badly wrong along the way alternating with scenes of an increasingly agitated present-day Alex who imagines a series of increasingly violent deaths for himself. Then again are they in fact fantasies or prescient flashes? Is a threatening car tailing Alex just a paranoid fantasy or a genuine threat? Readers will have to wait until the very end of this hugely ambitious graphic novel to find out. Moreover woven into this narrative fabric is a series of imagined moments from two generations ago a Golden Age of animation when an earlier Alex made his way into a much different Mickey Walt Studio as imagined by the increasingly despondent present-day Alex. skipping seamlessly along the present and several different pasts reality and fantasy Freeway is another step forward for a major cartooning talent.
language: English
title: Freeway
publisher: Fantagraphics Books