By Oliver Gerlach

Hannah K. Lee’s Language Barrier is a collection that self-identifies as “zines, comics, and other fragments” on the cover. That’s an important piece of categorisation, as is the Koyama Press website’s description of it as “[an] art book”. This isn’t really a comic, and shouldn’t be treated like one. It’s a giant zine or a surreal art project or something like that. Yes, there are comics in it, but I wouldn’t call it a comic in itself. Whatever it is, though, it’s profoundly weird and unsettling, and doesn’t sit comfortably in any major category.