Abrams ComicArts has released The Undertaker, Vol. 1: The Gold Eater and the Dance of the Vultures, the start of a high-stakes western that tackles life and death head-on. Today, The Beat has an exclusive sneak peek at the graphic novel.
Written by Xavier Dorison and illustrated by Ralph Meyer, with colors by Caroline Delabie and translation by Tom Imbor, The Undertaker follows mortician Jonas Crow as he travels the west providing final rites—but this simple life is about to get very complicted.
Here’s the full synopsis:
A gold-toothed corpse, a town hungry for vengeance, and a hearse full of secrets–a gripping opening to a groundbreaking graphic novel series by expert duo Xavier Dorison and Ralph Meyer.
Jonas Crow is not your average mortician. Tall, lean, and accompanied by a carrion-eating vulture, he travels the Old West in a black hearse, providing final rites for those who can afford them. But Jonas is a man with a past as dark as the clothes he wears—and his newest client is about to make life very difficult for the living.
When the wealthy and hated mining tycoon Joe Cusco summons Crow, it’s for a peculiar request: Cusco knows he’s dying, and he plans to take his vast fortune with him. By swallowing his hoard of gold nuggets before drawing his last breath, he turns his own body into a literal treasure chest.
Now Jonas Crow must transport the gold-filled corpse across a desert crawling with outlaws, desperate miners, and Cusco’s own vengeful former employees. With a straight-laced English governess and a mysterious woman named Rose by his side, Crow must navigate a trail of greed where the line between the “good guys” and the vultures is razor-thin.
Check out a preview below.
“Fans of the modern western will be thoroughly charmed by the witty and inscrutable undertaker Jonas Crow as he gets tangled up in the lives—and deaths—of the folks in California of yesteryear,” said Abrams Comic Arts publisher Joseph Montagne.
“Ralph Meyer’s immersive art will plunge you into the deadly sun-bleached deserts and desperate dark saloons of Crow’s world, as Xavier Dorison’s relentlessly surprising storytelling drags you down the twisting dirt roads of the wild west in a wooden-wheeled hearse to its glittering and explosive conclusion,” Montagne continued.
The Undertaker, Vol. 1: The Gold Eater and the Dance of the Vultures is available now everywhere books are sold and at your local comic shop.
