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In IDW Publishing’s upcoming, fact-based, fictional hardcover graphic novel Fishtown, author and Philadelphia native Kevin Colden examines the motives of the murderers through loosely-based characters, imagined conversations and confessions directly aimed at the reader.
Inspired in 2005 by newspaper articles, television coverage, and snippets of trial testimony, Colden originally intended to create a more fact-based account of the story, but hit a roadblock due to inaccessible trial transcripts and ongoing litigation. Says the author, “At that point, I began to think about the reaction the public was having to the story and wrote the events how I imagined they occurred. When I finished the script I realized I had hit on a deeper emotional truth than the facts alone could have shown.”
In March 2007, the first chapter of Fishtown was awarded a self-publishing grant from the Xeric Foundation which Colden declined in order to publish the piece as a weekly webcomic at www.ACT-I-VATE.com, a web-based collective of established and up-and-coming cartoonists. “I mistakenly put Fishtown online before hearing from the Xeric committee. It turned out there was a conflict with their policy regarding simultaneous web and print release, so I chose to decline the grant money and take my chances with the limitless potential of the web.” The Xeric Foundation remained supportive of Fishtown, and in 2008, partly as a result of Colden’s decision, reversed their policy and now support concurrent web serialization for grant recipients.
Fishtown presents a chilling portrait of teenage angst gone horribly wrong by threading fact with fiction, reality with fantasy, and weaving a tapestry of connected vignettes that add up to a devastating treatise on the human condition. In its yearlong run at ACT-I-VATE, it garnered near universal praise for its confrontational and unflinching dramatization of the events leading seemingly average kids to turn into vicious killers.
Fishtown, a 120-page hardcover-with-dustjacket (ISBN 1-60010-273-8, Diamond order code SEP08 4143) will be in stores on November 12.
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