Available now. Drake Ullingsworth features in a typically ambiguous mystery story set in a hostile urban landscape. It’s not clear what the mystery is, nor whether he actually solves anything, but the surreal adventure is full of inexplicable events and startling images.
Not exactly a comic. The story is written as prose in the manner of a first-person detective noir. Facing each page is a full-size illustration in full colour. The drawings date from 2010, but I’ve recently added colours using my old-school halftone technique.
Some of this material surfaced as The Case of the Concrete Collapse, an experiment that didn’t quite come together. It attempted to blend about three or four separate approaches and stories, including a TV interview with Drake as if he were a real person, into one confusing melange. What I’ve done now is extract the prose and full-page illos, to arrive at this new item.
It’s also a retelling of ‘Unnatural Disasters’, a very early Drake story from 1984 which first appeared in Fast Fiction (the anthology). This version comes very close to what I was trying to say, but I expect I shall revisit it again at some future point.
Bonus note for lovers of surrealist art: In April 2027 I posted a version of the cover image online. Lutz Eitzel responded by pointing me to this 1948 work on paper by Rene Magritte, which is from the drawings he did to illustrate Les Chants de Maldoror, the 19th-century prose-poem novel much loved by the Surrealists. I love Magritte’s work, yet I had never seen this image before. It’s a perfect fit. Today’s item also contains a fleeting reference to the collage novels of Max Ernst.
24pp (incl covers), A4 size, full-colour. Price £5 plus postage.
Your order will arrive in a card-backed envelope.
