Lorenz Peter’s second graphic novel, Chaos Mission , is an extremely atypical coming-of-age autobiography originally serialized in an underground zine by the same name. Peter’s first graphic novel, The Last Remaining Ancient Mellish Bird, was a fun, fantastical story with a surprisingly dark resonance. In Chaos Mission we find the source of that darkness. Peter begins with a slice of neglected-teenager depravity in the small town of “Fort McMurder, Alberta” and moves into his nomadic cross-country journeys with a community of outsiders – street people, junkies, psychiatric survivors. Always acted upon and rarely acting, Peter’s characters come to life in nonjudgmental and occasionally unexamined first-person narrative. His cartoony style and breezy narration make a dark world light, rendering this community of misfits human and sympathetic. A self-taught artist, Peter’s detailed, ingénue art brings to mind the authentic sixties “comix” spirit, warts and all. Too bad the work ends abruptly with a simple summation – I get the sense there is more to tell.