Murky Depths

MURKY DEPTHS will begin its serialization of DEAD GIRLS – Richard Calder’s graphic novel adaptation of his acclaimed, cult cyberpunk novel of the same name – with ISSUE #9, available early August 2009.
Leonardo M Giron – the Manila-based artist fast making a name for himself who has appeared in previous issues of Murky Depths – will be illustrating.
Calder wrote Dead Girls while living in Thailand – principally Bangkok, and later, Nongkhai, a town on the Mekong River bordering Laos. The novel is largely set in Bangkok, and is heavily influenced by manga, anime, and Asian cinema.
Calder says: ‘Leonardo M Giron’s indigenous grasp of the ambience that Manila shares with Bangkok, and his ability to translate this into a unique, manga-like idiom, makes him perfect for delineating the cyberpunk exuberance and sheer down-and-dirty exoticism of Dead Girls.’
According to The Washington Post Book World 'On the evidence of his brilliant debut novel, Dead Girls, Richard Calder bids fair to make off with Alfred Bester's mantle of charmed literary omnipotence. A master of baroque pyrotechnics, rapid pacing, cosmopolitan sangfroid and knock-your-socks-off conceptualization, Bester has left traces everywhere, but no solid progeny. Until now.'
Dead Girls the graphic novel represents a substantial re-imagining of Dead Girls the novel. The characters, and the fictional universe they inhabit, remain essentially the same, but all else has been worked into something new.
MURKY DEPTHS is available at murkydepths.com.
To read DEAD GIRLS – THE GRAPHIC NOVEL in its entirety, subscribe now!

Reaction to read a comic in public day

Just a quickie reaction to all these ads I see for Read a Comic in Public day on thursday. This is one of those well meaning ideas that kind of irks me a bit because it suggests that comic book fans are still closeted people who won't read their comics in public. This is not true of at least myself, I read my comics (the trades anyway, I am less likely to bring individual issues, especially older single issues out of the house because they can get damaged so easily) in public all the time. At work, in restaurants, wherever. If I don't have a prose book on me that I'm reading through, then I have a stack of TPB's or HC's with me that I'm plowing through. Super hero, indie, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, whoever.

Do you know why?

BECAUSE I DON'T CARE WHETHER OR NOT PEOPLE LIKE IT OR NOT!

I don't care whether people think I'm brilliant, or stupid, or whatever. I don't care about their prejudices or praise for my reading choices (though if they praise it more the better for the industry). I simply DON'T CARE. You shouldn't care either.

Read a Comic In Public Day? That should be every day people. Every day when you have a comic that your reading and you have the time and occasion to read it out in the wide world? Then go do it. Because if you're so ashamed of your habit and your reading choices that you won't do it, or that you have to be prompted with an event like this to do it? Well, congrats, you're a coward. You're a coward because you worry about the judgment of strangers and people who really and truly have no concept of what they're talking about when they look down on you.

Read your comics wherever you want. People don't like it? Forget 'em. Friends don't like it? Find new ones. Family don't like it? Disown 'em.

Stand up for your self and for what you enjoy. The End.