Sammy Harkham

Goblins, wizards, superheroes, talking animals, and an assortment of fantastical shapeshifting characters populate this book of never-before-collected comics and illustrations, many of them drawn on incidental materials such as scrap paper and notepads. Pulling from pulp, sci-fi, gag cartoons, fantasy, and thrillers, and populated by goblins, astronauts, magical thieves, and talking owls, CF's comics break apart genres and forms, then reassemble them into one-of-a-kind stories that reveal an immense imagination and boundary-pushing talent. Christopher Forgues (better known as CF) roared onto the indie comics scene in the early 2000s, producing some of the most exciting and influential work of the decade. His output was startlingly original and impressively prolific: his collaboration with Ben Jones, Paper Radio; his multi-part epic, Powr Mastrs; and the shorter comics and zines now collected for the first time in Distant Ruptures. These comics--created using scratchy pencil and brilliant color, smudged Xeroxes and scraps of notepaper--capture the extraordinary range of CF's work. Fellow cartoonist Sammy Harkham has gathered the best of them into this new collection, which also includes an introduction by Gabriel Winslow-Yost and a new interview with CF. Distant Ruptures offers readers their first chance to see the full scope of this remarkable era of CF's comics.

"A story about storytelling... Conjures up the grindhouse movie-making scene in 1970s Los Angeles and tracks an ambitious young man's flailing attempts to build a family and a career as a film arteest in that debased world... A book with a lot of heart." --Art Spiegelman, bestselling author of MAUS Fourteen years in the making, renowned and beloved graphic novelist Sammy Harkham finally delivers his epic story of artistic ambition, the heartbreak it can bring, and what it means to be human YOU CAN BURN IN HELL Set primarily in Los Angeles in 1971, Blood of the Virgin is the story of twenty-seven-year-old Seymour, an Iraqi Jewish immigrant film editor who works for an exploitation film production company. Sammy Harkham brings us into the underbelly of Los Angeles during a crucial evolutionary moment in the industry from the last wheeze of the studio system to the rise of independent filmmaking. Seymour, his wife, and their new baby struggle as he tries to make it in the movie business, writing screenplays on spec and pining for the chance to direct. When his boss buys one of his scripts for a project called Blood of the Virgin and gives Seymour the chance to direct it, what follows is a surreal, tragicomic making-of journey. As Seymour's blind ambition propels the movie, his home life grows increasingly fraught. The film's production becomes a means to spiral out into time and space, resulting in an epic graphic novel that explores the intersection of twentieth-century America, parenthood, sex, the immigrant experience, the dawn of early Hollywood, and, shockingly, the Holocaust. Like a cosmic kaleidoscope, Blood of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each panel, widening its context as the story unfolds, building an intricate web of dreams and heartbreak, allowing the reader to zoom in to the novel's core: the bittersweet cost of coming into one's own.

Det Grymma Svärdet fyller tio år och firar det med sitt tjockaste nummer någonsin, med det flummiga temat "livet". Svek, droger, kärlek, kroppsvätskor, dödsfall, relationer som går sönder.... allt ryms i temat. Men det finns även plats för satir över identitetspolitik, en massa dikter, ostrullning, lantlig misärturism, vårdjobb, syttende maj-firande, tidelag, en stenåldersskildring, dagböcker... luttrade läsare LÄR känna igen sig.