Announcing DIANA-- the triptych is complete!

At long last, I’m proud to reveal the cover of my forthcoming lovely monster of a graphic novel, Diana— out October 6th from Abrams ComicArts! It’s available for preorders now, anywhere books are sold (ISBN 9781419790867).

Diana is both a self-contained graphic novel and a prequel to Fall Through, weaving these stories together with Come Again to make an interconnected triptych. This book idea took me by complete surprise, transforming my understanding of these characters I’ve grown to love so deeply— and making Diana was the most fulfilling creative experience of my life.

Diana largely takes place in the year before Fall Through, delivering us on that book’s doorstep— but not unscathed. Yes, there’s music, bootleg magic, relationship drama, curses, demons, queerness, and punk. But if Fall Through is fundamentally about connection, then Diana is about isolation. It’s about the dangers of rigid thinking and mythologizing. It’s about the slow-motion tragedy of a loved one rejecting opportunities to choose differently, instead digging deeper into the destructive allure of self-alienation. Above all, it’s about love as an ever-expanding openness in direct opposition to control.

This story was built around embracing the sense of mystery I pursue— not a set of unknowns to be solved and revealed, but a deepening sense of journeying into the unknown. People are hungry for strange things in a monochrome world, for the radical uniqueness of being alive, for the thrill of not knowing and not being told how to think about a story.

In that sense, my writing was guided by the perspectives of both Ursula K. Le Guin and David Lynch when pressed about the content and meaning of their own stories. But Diana is also about young adults trying to live their ideals while also being short-sighted, self-serving, horny idiots. It’s about the fog generated by attraction.

Diana also performs a bit of quantum-magic for us as readers, retroactively transforming our understanding of events in both Come Again and Fall Through— making them different books before and after reading Diana. I look forward to everyone being able to have this flexible reading experience.

There’s more to announce this week regarding Come Again and Fall Through— stay tuned, and thank you for your continued faith and support!