Review: Spiral & Other Stories by Aidan Koch.
New York Review Comics, April 2024. 208 p. ill. ISBN 9781681378350 (softcover), $24.95.
Reviewed July, 2025
By: Aurora Daniel, MA History and MS Library and Information Science Student, Simmons University
Aidan Koch’s Spiral & Other Stories is a meditative exploration of how minimalism can be used to explore memories. Koch pushes the boundaries of how much color, line, and detail need to be included within the panels to convey movement and meaning. Although there are a number of artists who choose to make a graphic novel because it allows them the flexibility of emphasizing both the visual and the written, Koch’s execution achieves a delicate balance that forces readers to take their time while keeping them hooked.
The eponymous story “Spiral” follows a young unnamed woman as she moves to a new area. Despite opening with the parts of the story arranged like a clockface, the plot moves anything but consecutively. The story jumps between prior to her moving and to her in the new place. Interspersed throughout these time skips are snippets of a tale of two unnamed rivers as they come together and apart that parallel the unnamed woman’s journey. Throughout the story both the figures and the scenery come in and out of detail, sometimes to demonstrate emphasis of one and other times to show connection between the two.
The proceeding stories, “A New Year,” “The Forest,” and “Man Made Lake” use similar artistic methods to explore the cyclical nature of life, humanity’s connection to the landscape, and environmental degradation. Beginning with “Spiral”, the stories move away from familiar topics. Paralleling this is how abstract the art in each story is, as if though the meaning behind the imagery could not be conveyed without an equally opaque visual representation. In an afterword, Nicole Rudick provides more of Koch’s perspective on the themes she explores throughout each story included in the graphic novel, to include other artists and artworks Koch is responding to.
This book would be great for a young adult or adult section of a public library as well as an academic or art library.
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