If you liked Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino, and its illustrations by Evan Munday, check out Munday's first graphic novel, Quarter-Life Crisis. 

There's been some sort of apocalypse that's killed everyone in Toronto who isn't 25 years old. (It's rumoured that babies and the elderly survived on the Toronto Islands but since all the boats were sunk that can't be proved.)

Now, Toronto is a hellhole. Gangs have claimed territory and there are mysterious, murderous robots roaming the streets. There's the pure evil of the Bay Streeters, with their pinstripes and Vespas, and there's a life-or-death Dance Dance Revolution challenge in Koreatown.

Brothers Harper and Aaron Yung are holed up in what's left of the OCAD building, high above the streets. They survive by scavenging building materials, exchanging copper pipes with the Rogers Gang staked out at the decapitated CN Tower.

Harper is our window into this world, explaining some things along the way and recalling his ordinary past. He never gets to the cause of the catastrophe, but who cares? Aaron somehow gained telekinetic powers during the apocalypse - don't ask how - which come in handy when you want to use a streetcar. On the other hand, he's now mute.

The brothers encounter the surviving half of an indie band and have to break into the Shoppers on Bathurst. It's all great fun for Toronto lovers and haters.

Munday's style is boldly black and white, if a little cluttered. Plus he provides some excerpts from his sketchbook which give insight into his drawing process. The book concludes with a teaser hinting about the next volume in the series.

Munday's website is www.idontlikemundays.com.

. . .

"Grandfather was one of the great banana pissers of the lower Andes." You can find that terrific sentence about a quarter of the way through The Olive and the Dawn by Ian Orti (Snare Books). 

It's a brief and elegant book of connected stories about things such as lustful Irish tennis stars and discos in Ecuador. At the centre is a man called the Olive, who might be a window cleaner or a bicycle thief. He is, however, certainly in love.

Orti wittily concludes his book with an Epilogue, a Last Call, and a Postscript, with different possible endings. He fractures narrative in these graceful and surreal stories. 

The Olive and the Dawn has a trailer. You can watch it at http://snarebooks.wordpress.com/books/ian-orti/. There's also a photo of Orti kissing a barnyard animal.