The brilliant independent British comics publisher Avery Hill is currently seeking support to bring you three amazing new books: 2120 by George Wylesol, Sleeping While Standing by Taki Soma, and Outer Wilderness by Claire Scully.
The good news is that they’ve already hit their £12,000 funding target, but there’s still time to back the crowdfunder on Kickstarter before it closes this Wednesday (8th December 2021).
2120 by George Wylesol
Many Avery Hill readers will recognise George Wylesol’s work from his previous Avery Hill Publishing titles – Ghosts, Etc. and Internet Crusader. 2120, a 500-page graphic novel, is no less ground-breaking than his previous books.
Presented as a blend of classic “choose your own adventure” stories and point and click escape games, the epic 2120 offers readers the chance to explore these liminal spaces and, at the same time, take an existential journey of discovery…
You’re Wade, a schlubby middle-aged computer repairman, sent to fix a computer in a vacant, nondescript office building. When you get inside the door locks behind you, and you can’t get out. Now the adventure begins! You have to explore this building and try to find your way home. The building is huge on the inside with a lot of sprawling hallways and empty rooms but your only hope is to uncover clues and try to work out the mystery this whole experience hangs on.
“I really like writing and drawing, so graphic novels is a natural intersection of the two for me,” says George. ”But I realized that I really don’t like drawing the same characters over and over again. It gets really frustrating and tedious for me.
“So I did Internet Crusader without drawing any characters really, and I thought it worked pretty well. In the second half of that book, the viewer fights through the depths of hell in a first-person POV, and I was also surprised that it worked.
So for 2120, I decided to continue using that first-person POV. I played some ancient point-and-click games on the Internet Archive, and realized the format could work pretty well as a book. I’ve been interested in interactivity for a while – I did a short-lived choose-your-adventure narrative on Instagram a few years ago, and always wanted to make something bigger with the same kind of interactivity, so it all came together with 2120. I think there’s a lot of room in comics for more experimental work, so it was a good fit.”
George Wylesol is an illustrator, designer and writer from Philadelphia, living and working in Baltimore. He has an MFA in Illustration Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art. He’s won a prestigious Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators and he’s known for his freelance illustration work for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.
• Back the Avery Hill Publishing Spring 2022 Line Kickstarter here
Sleeping While Standing by Taki Soma
Taki Soma is a Hugo Award-nominated artist, writer and colourist, and her new graphic novel, Sleeping While Standing, is her first solo collection.
A series of short autobiographical strips, dropping in at important events throughout her life that shaped who she is today, told in a compelling and humorous authorial voice. Over one hundred pages, we are led by Taki through her early childhood in Japan in the early 1980s, to moving to Minnesota, the separation of her parents, childhood trauma, teenage angst, death, drugs, comics, health issues, love, fertility, pets and zombies; all of life is here in this book! It’s a picture of a highly regarded creator, with an unflinching look at some particularly harrowing moments, but threaded through with levity and love.
All print editions of Sleeping While Standing that are ordered via Kickstarter will come with a special signed and numbered bookplate.
“Sleeping While Standing is my first autobiographical book,” Taki notes. “Working in this way was an intimate and visceral experience on the surface, but I realized that part of how I approach both nonfiction and fiction is by processing everything life throws at me, so it didn’t feel all that different from fictional works from the past; was it something I have always wanted to do? I don’t think so. I worked on one story just to help me process it a couple of years ago, and many more subjects just kept popping up that I just had to follow that instinct.”
Taki Soma has worked on projects such as Rapture, Sinergy, The Victories, United States vs. Murder, Inc., Bitch Planet, Dick Tracy, The After Realm, Iron Man and others. Her work can be found in titles from publishers such as Image, IDW, Marvel, Dark Horse, Jinxworld at DC and more. She lives surrounded by furry critters and a husband who shares the same passion in comics.
• Back the Avery Hill Publishing Spring 2022 Line Kickstarter here
Outer Wilderness by Claire Scully
Claire Scully’s ongoing series of stunningly-illustrated books, all published by AHP, explore varied environments: Internal Wilderness, Desolation Wilderness, and now, Outer Wilderness. Each book is a standalone, wordless collection of illustrations that examine our relationship with the spaces we occupy.
Outer Wilderness is the third and final instalment of a journey that began with introspective self-imagined places (Internal Wilderness), followed by a passage of experience and memory (Desolation Wilderness) and now looks further away to the edges of the universe and into the unknown.
Each of these landscapes are inspired from a mix of science fiction, imagination and space documentaries which builds into a journey through a fantastical environment.
Each of these landscapes are inspired from a mix of science fiction, imagination and space documentaries which builds into a journey through a fantastical environment.
Having previously stretched imaginations with her previous works, Claire says “Outer Wilderness is way more fantastical. I get a chance to really stretch my imagination and play with more ridiculous locations.
“The biggest struggles in the creation of this book is pushing beyond what is easily accessible or obvious and really get a sense of each of the places, I want them to feel plausible but not of this world. This time I have introduced a little bit more narrative into some of the images, more of a sequence or sense of time passing through life cycles.”
Based in London, freelance illustrator Claire Scully works in pen, ink and digital with a heavy focus on drawing. Her work explores a variety of themes including the relationship between ‘man’ and his environment. Illustration clients include: Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, National Maritime Museum, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, New York Times, Adidas, Line Ski, Burton Snowboards and Icebreakers clothing label.
Founded by Ricky Miller and Dave White, Avery Hill Publishing is an independent publishing company based in London that helps aspiring creators reach their potential and is a home to the geniuses that the mainstream has yet to recognise. Ricky and Dave were joined in their fantastic endeavours by Katriona Chapman in 2015.
Their canon includes psychogeographical mappings, eco-anarchist wizards, boat-shaped coffins, an all-female/non-binary construction crew (in space), a bad canine named Greasy, and much more.
Avery Hill books have won Eisner and Ignatz awards, and Avery Hill themselves have been nominated as best publisher in the Broken Frontier Awards for seven years running (winning three times.)
• Back the Avery Hill Publishing Spring 2022 Line Kickstarter here
• Avery Hill is online at averyhillpublishing.com
• Claire Scully is online at www.clairescully.com
• Follow Taki Soma on Twitter @takisoma
• George Wylesol is online at wylesol.com
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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