Closing Act by Chris W. Kim

Reviewed by Paul Carlucci

If the only constant in life is change, then surely our failure to manage it is a close runner-up. Using a surreal but endlessly relatable setting, Chris W. Kim’s latest graphic novel, Closing Act, traces an insular community’s battle against time and transformation, rooting the theme in a network of narrowing urban alleys. It’s an artful, engrossing read that pulls at the eye, plays with the heart, and provokes the mind throughout every one of its sepia-soaked pages.

This new work comes two years after Kim’s last book, Adherence, was met with critical acclaim in Canada and beyond. The Toronto-based illustrator is the author of two previous graphic novels, Strays and Herman by Trade, and he’s an illustrator for clients like The New Yorker, The Walrus, and The Hollywood Reporter.

In the opening pages of Closing Act, we meet Lea while she’s trinket shopping. A thief creeps up behind her, snatches her bag, and ducks into an alley. She chases him but gets lost after rounding a few tight corners, the sounds of the open city fading as she realizes she won’t be able to retrace her steps.

The first alley dweller she meets is the bespectacled Dee, who explains the physical changes the community has been facing. A helpful but cold intellectual, he’s devoted to mapping the shifting and narrowing alleys with calculated precision, even as he understands accurate representation is impossible. He introduces Lea to Miya, a community knowledge holder who lives in a dark cubby and has a comprehensive but largely intuitive understanding of the alleyways and their evolving layout. Not long after, Lea meets Yannis, another mapmaker, but like Miya, he favours intuition for his renderings, which Dee dismisses as “a mindless compulsion.”

Kim covers this and more ground with remarkable speed, quickly introducing us to one of his primary tension points: intuition versus calculation and the utility of each when representing life and its constant. But nothing feels rushed, and as the book progresses and terminal change forces itself on the cast, the author-artist seems to suggest that both approaches to representation create the conditions for community, but at the same time, community is inherently blinkered—it’s fundamentally narrow—forcing its members to experience isolation from the broader world as well as division among themselves, which makes it narrower still.

The artwork is as captivating as the storytelling—in fact, this story wouldn’t work as well in any other form. The palette of mustard yellows, sandstone browns, and muddy blacks furthers the sense of confinement projected from the narrowing alleyways, and the built environment is drawn in complex detail, with pipes and vents, bricks and gates, and air conditioners and fire escapes all rendered with tight hatching and crosshatching, while the main characters are frequently conjured from negative space, their ghostly white simplicity leaping out of the sepia and textured only by simple but resonant facial and sartorial features.

In this contrast, we see something of the tension between calculation and intuition, with the latter carrying the more human—and therefore more relatable—energy. At the same time, in Miya’s character, we see how the two can find equilibrium: she’s both intuitive and meticulous in her understandings and discussions of her world, and she’s the only main character whose white form is regularly complicated by the hatching and crosshatching we see in the built environment, a brilliant touch.

Closing Act is a phenomenal book, and reading it is an experience of being stunned out of the story only to get sucked right back in—repeatedly. A perfect marriage of art, philosophy, and narrative, it’s an absolute must for readers of any form.

About the Author

Chris W. Kim is a cartoonist and illustrator from Toronto, Ontario. He has worked for clients such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Walrus, Bloomberg Businessweek and The Atlantic, among others. His first graphic novel, Herman by Trade (SelfMadeHero), was published in 2017, followed by Strays (SelfMadeHero) in 2021, Adherent (Conundrum Press) in 2023, and Closing Act (Conundrum Press) in 2026.

About the Reviewer

Paul Carlucci is the author of one novel, The Voyageur, and three story collections, The High-Rise in Fort Fierce, A Plea for Constant Motion, and The Secret Life of Fission. He won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and has been a finalist for two Ottawa Book Awards and two ReLit Awards. He’s a freelance editor, working with academics and research professionals, hybrid and traditional presses, and aspiring authors.

Book Details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Conundrum Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 15 2026

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 268 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1772621196

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1772621198