An intricate and complex autobiographical comic by one of the most talented and innovative young cartoonists today.

The story begins with a story inside the story: the cartoon character Paul Hornschemeier is trying to finish a story called "Paul and the Magic Pencil." Paul has been granted a magical implement, a pencil, and is trying to figure out what exactly it can do. He isn't coming up with much, but then we zoom out of this story to the creator, Paul, whose father is about to go on a walk to turn off the lights in his law office in the center of the small town. Abandoning the comic strip temporarily, Paul leaves with his camera, in order to fulfill a promise to his girlfriend that he would take pictures of the places that affected him as a child.

As the walk with his father begins, and Paul starts to record the places of his childhood, the story leaps forward and backward through time, revolving around the events leading (and subsequent) to a beating near a funeral home in fifth grade. Amid these temporal bounces, we are taken from the law office to a convenience store to a debilitating car accident to the time of Zeno and the pre-Socratic philosophers, where we abruptly dissect Zeno and Parmenides' relationship and their refutation of the existence of change. Really. And with each step, Paul is trying to figure out how he will end his story, which he will finish when they return to the house of his youth.

Each "chapter" of the story is drawn in a completely different style, with strikingly unique production and color themes, and yet, somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) this non-linear progression, it all comes together as one story: a story questioning change, progress, and worth within the author's life.