Is there a more all-encompassing trap than that of immortality? I mean, living forever sounds great on paper, but what if it actually came to pass?

Eight pages may sound like nowhere near enough to explore a topic this weighty, but in cartoonist Morgan Vogel’s self-published mini Valle, he manages to take a pretty good whack at it as his titular protagonist, and a handful of others, find themselves “shanghaied” (or possibly born — certainly endlessly reborn) into a vitrual reality scenario where they are not allowed to die. Which might be cool if the place looked fun, but it doesn’t.

Austere, I believe, is the word we’re looking for, one that applies to both the landscape of the “world” the story takes place in and to Vogel’s art, its simple yet undoubtedly expressive lines delineating what can only best be described as an endless expanse of…