THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND, The Legendary Graphic Novel, Arrives, At Long Last!

STRANGE DEATH is NOW AVAILABLE from:

 — Diamond Comics  and your local comic shop
— your local independent bookstore
— your favorite megastore
— directly from Living the Line

""Every page is visually enthralling. This is an astonishing aesthetic artifact..." BOOKLIST, Starred review, July 2021 issue.

Legendary creator Dave Sim is renowned world-wide for his groundbreaking Cerebus the Aardvark. Now, in The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, Sim brings to life the history of comics' greatest creators, using their own techniques. Equal parts Understanding Comics and From Hell, Strange Death is a head-on collision of ink drawing and spiritual intrigue, pulp comics and movies, history and fiction. The story traces the lives and techniques of Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby), Stan Drake (Juliet Jones), Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), and more, dissecting their methods through recreations of their artwork, and highlighting the metatextual resonances that bind them together.

The project has its origins in the pages of Sim's post-Cerebus comic glamourpuss (2008-2012), but when Sim began Strange Death the graphic novel, almost none of that earlier work was retained. Sim completed approximately 180 pages of this 320-page volume by himself, between 2012 and 2015, before being struck with a potentially career-ending wrist malady. Fellow photorealist Carson Grubaugh was brought on by Sim shortly thereafter to continue the work, which he did over the next few years.

In 2020, Sim announced his intentions to cease work on the project, and gave Grubaugh permission to publish the entirety of the work, with a newly-created conclusion by Grubaugh. “SDOAR is the work of an apex-level-creator doing the best work he has ever done, an absolute master-class in the potential of the medium,” says Grubaugh. “The thought that it might never see the light of day tortured me. That I somehow get to be the guy to wrap it up and bring it to the market is totally baffling.“

The Strange Death of Alex Raymond (ISBN: 978-1-7368605-0-2) IS NOW AVAILABLE as a deluxe oversized hardback, utilizing state-of-the-art sheetfed offset printers and cutting-edge prepress techniques to bring an unparalleled level of detail to the printed page.

As many of you know, the printer's prepress staff made a critical error in the July printing of Strange Death that resulted in four almost-blank pages in the book. They compounded this error by failing to halt shipment of the book, which resulted in our distributor Diamond processing the misprint as if it were a CORRECTED printing instead.

All misprint copies mistakenly shipped to retailers were ordered destroyed, and retailers were refunded in full for the misprinted books.

Please note-- if you see a misprint copy of Strange Death in stores, not only is it missing four pages of content, it has not been paid for, and thus the book's authors, publisher, and distributor have received no compensation for it. These misprint copies made their way to comic shops and certain book retailers, and were ordered destroyed by the distributor. Please, if you see a misprint copy for sale, notify the retailer that it is a misprint, or let us know via email, at livingthelinepublishing@gmail.com, and we will contact them.

Thanks so much! We hope you enjoy the book, at long last.

Here is a printable file of the missing content.