It’s Small Press Spotlight time! This fine Wednesday we turn our attention to Brooklyn-based independent publisher Radix Media and their new upcoming title Mortals. The “meditative graphic novel” from the Brooklyn-based company is set to release on March 16, 2022. Writer John Dermot Woods and illustrator Matt L make up the creative team.

Read details here:

“Set in Brooklyn, the story revolves around Francis, an aging actor fiercely tethered to his craft, an obsession that threatens to estrange him from his family. More than the actual compulsions of the protagonist, this is a deeply evocative story of a father and son finding their way to each other in the aftermath of a divorce, with Brooklyn, rendered in black and white, forming the backdrop. As you can tell, this is a quintessential Brooklyn story, made possible by the artistic temperament of the borough.

Set in the hip private school and boutique cafe culture of Brooklyn, New York, Mortals is a meditative graphic novel about aging and posterity.  

There isn’t a role Francis has played well. An actor well past his prime, he barely has an acting career to speak of.  His ex-wife, Claudette, finds him pathetic and he routinely disappoints his precocious young son, Courtney. When an opportunity to play the dying father of a teenage pop sensation chasing indie film credit comes along, Francis must sacrifice his ego and heightened self-importance for this one last shot at legacy. The mortality of his on-screen character is a stark reminder of his own end that day by day feels closer than ever before. In the end, what will Francis  have to show for the life that he has lived?” 

Mortals

This is Radix’s second collaboration with Woods after his fiction chapbook, Always Blue, which was published as one of seven chapbooks as part of Futures: A Science Fiction Series. It is the first collaboration with Matt L.  

Characterized by black and white illustrations, the setting described in the tale is “a dreary place rife with precocious children reading Oedipus on stage, rambunctious teens who drive their ornery neighbors mad, and less than pleasant adults. Reminiscent of the loneliness and apathy that infects the lead protagonist in David Mazzucchelli’s  magnum opus Asterios Polyp, Mortals is stark with the knowledge of impending mortality.”

Check out some pages below!

Mortals Mortals