Charlotte delivers her evangelical theories on the mysterious egg. Betty struggles with her sense of duty as opposed to her own will and belief, and to the advice of Curtis. The squirrels have it in for Algernon, and he winds up below ground. The Idiot's life is about to change drastically, and we get a glimpse of Isaac, the pilot's, point of view.

While the idiot begins fending for himself, the plane hits his home. Algernon awakens underground, the pilot endures his post-crash frustration and the birds curiosity, and Louis & Morris arrive with disturbing news.

Betty defends the explosion site against hungry crows, who scavenge their meal elsewhere. The pilot and the idiot have an encounter, and their relationships with the finches evolve. Meanwhile, Alger's journey through the underground holds a bitterweet surprise. The predators philosophize.

The conclusion of the landmark existentialist fable. The pilot follows two swans underground, crows laugh and insult one another, and the dead walk. Anders Nilsen has spent much of the past decade working on this 600 page Ignatz-nominated series.

A haunting postmodern fable, Big Questions is the magnum opus of Anders Nilsen, one of the brightest and most talented young cartoonists working today. This beautiful minimalist story, collected here for the first time, is the culmination of ten years and more than six hundred pages of work that details the metaphysical quandaries of the occupants of an endless plain, existing somewhere between a dream and a Russian steppe. A downed plane is thought to be a bird and the unexploded bomb that came from it is mistaken for a giant egg by the group of birds whose lives the story follows. The indifferent, stranded pilot is of great interest to the birds—some doggedly seek his approval, while others do quite the opposite, leading to tensions in the group. Nilsen seamlessly moves from humor to heartbreak. His distinctive, detailed line work is paired with plentiful white space and large, often frameless panels, conveying an ineffable sense of vulnerability and openness. Big Questions has roots in classic fables—the birds and snakes have more to say than their human counterparts, and there are hints of the hero’s journey, but here the easy moral that closes most fables is left open and ambiguous. Rather than lending its world meaning, Nilsen’s parable lets the questions wander where they will.