This is a small story but a nice one. The Only Living Boy,
a fantasy comic about a runaway boy with no memory struggling to survive on a dangerous planet, was published last month by Papercutz, and it’s already going back to press for both the hardcover and paperback editions.
Written by David Gallaher and drawn by Steve Ellis, the story started as a webcomic and was nominated for three Harvey Awards. We’ve been fans at the Beat since it began for its gorgeous visuals and tense story.
It’s also a personal one for Gallaher, who wrote a frank and personal history of his struggle with epilepsy for io9, a struggle that includes the loss of many of his memories, much like his hero Erik Farrell:
A month after a major hospital stint, I found myself well enough to rejoin the working world. I took a position at an advertising firm, where the day-to-day structure facilitated my recovery. As my health recovered, I found myself working hand-in-hand with the New York City Police Department. On my way from the NYPD focus group, I found myself wandering through the film set of I Am Legend. I found myself lost trying to piece together my memories of the story. Was it related to the Vincent Price movie or the Charlton Heston films? As I tried to make sense of my environment, Paul Simon’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” popped up on my iPod.
Gallaher and Ellis promoted the book’s release with a series of #makecomics workshops helping show kids how to bring their own stories to life. A lot has gone into this book and it’s nice to see readers are getting a lot out of it.
And a few more preview pages:
I’m glad to see this being so well received. What Gallaher and Ellis have created here is exactly the type of comic needed to expand the market out to new audiences much in the same way that Noelle Stevenson has.
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