10 best Indie Comics of 2001 Désir This unpretentious little wordless graphic novel presents, in four brief stories, the frustrations of a crudely-drawn fat man, whose desire is represented by a flame over his head. The stories are simple enough, each time taking the form of an encounter with the desideratum and subsequent rebuffing; it`s their presentation that makes them stand out. Mahler`s art is stylized to the point where no one has a face to speak of, let alone a facial expression, but he nevertheless manages to craft a wordless story in which the characters´ emotions are always clear. The awkward pauses, the flawless sense of timing, the conversations conducted entirely in pictures, and the fact that each story ends with a pathetic character wallowing in self-pity, frustration, and loneliness, inevitably calls to mind the work of Chris Ware. POPCULTURESHOCK