The year is 1999—top hats and tailcoats are still all the rage, yet Pelican airships soar the skies, ladies in bouffant dresses and rocketshoes race home to attend telecinema performances, all while staying in touch by morsing back-and-forth on their pocket radiophones. Two young street urchins named Iver and Harvey have escaped from an orphanage doubling as an illegal workhouse, fleeing to the mountainous French terrain bordering Switzerland. Believing themselves to be hardened criminal masterminds, the pair try their hand at grifting unsuspecting revelers at the spring fair before attending the worst circus performance of all time. Seeing an opportunity to fleece the scattered circus strong man, the destiny of our two antiheroes soon becomes inextricably linked to the man they initially sought to take advantage of.

Like BONE meets BioShock, this cartoon book calls to mind the lively movement of classical animation from the 1940s and 50s, blending broad slapstick humour with a nostalgic view of the anxieties and predictions about the new millennium.