Crease is an ambitious and challenging 56 page, 8 1/2" x 11" comics anthology edited by Austin English. All of the comics are adaptations of written works penned in Europe from the late-19th through mid-20th century. There is a strong focus on the intersectionality of sex lives with the wider world of class and gender, and economic and political orders. These adaptations, for the most part, plunge in medias res* as readers are immediately brought face to face with lives lived on the edge.
Importantly, none of these works are simply visual transcriptions of texts. Each of the artists here brings their own talents to bear on the material and each piece is something more akin to a collaboration – with, of course, the adapting artist having free reign to proceed according to their own creative impulses. Settings range from the historically appropriate 1930s Europe of Pris Genet's adaptation of George Bataille's Blue of Noon, to Ian Sundahl's substituting a contemporary American milieu for that of the original Victorian England of My Secret Life. And then there are the more complexly layered adaptations of Alfred Jarry stories by Chris Cilla and of Jean Genet's Thief's Journal by John Hankiewicz, with each of these cartoonists bringing their unique visions to bear, transforming the original material and bringing it more fully into the comics dimension.
–––––––––––––
*E.A. Bethea's adaptation of selections from Harriet Sohmers Zwerling's journals of her life in 1950s Paris is the exception in its provision of context and additional biographical details for a fuller portrait.
–––––––––––––
front cover by Caroline Sury | back cover by Marlene Frontera | table of contents illustration by Lillian Ansell
It is printed in black & white with full color covers, entirely on newsprint and features entirely new material.
We've posted a few selections on the Copacetic Tumblr, HERE.
Here it is! 232 pages of 21st Century underground comix! Just in time to add to Jaywalk #5 and get the complete run!
Very limited supply.
