Guilty TP Karl Stevens 1st print Printing Error Pages Uncut At Top

Description

Guilty Paperback – Illustrated
by Karl Stevens (Illustrator)

Have you ever regretted running into an “ex”? Ingrid is riding home on her bike from her new job. From the corner of her eye she spots her ex-boyfriend Mark waiting for the bus. She stops to say ‘Hello”. Awkward plans to meet for drinks ensue, thus beginning a series of lies, drugs, alcohol, sexual frustration, and gobs of guilt.

Beautifully illustrated in meticulous pen and ink crosshatched realsim. Karl Stevens (born November 21, 1978 in Concord, Massachusetts) is a graphic novelist and painter. His first book, Guilty, was published in 2004 with a grant from the Xeric Foundation.

Paperback: 64 pages, 8-1/5″ x 11″
Publisher: Alternative Comics
ISBN 0-9764595-0-7

Guilty is set in Allston and Cambridge, and chronicles the events following an unexpected bus stop encounter between exes.

Reviews of Guilty noted its “painstaking cross-hatch[ing] … and its pitch-perfect, ‘overheard’ dialogue” and its extremely — even “overwhelmingly” — detailed realism. In addition to receiving the Xeric award for comic self-publishing, Guilty was nominated for the 2005 Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent, has been translated into French (published by Ego Comme X) and Dutch, and is included in Stephen Weiner’s The 101 Best Graphic Novels.

This is Karl Stevens’s debut project, a work that won a Xeric Award. I have been familiar with Guilty for some time, now, but I went back to revisit it given my upcoming interview with Stevens. I’m a big fan of his detailed, heavily crosshatched textures, as well as the subject matter of most of his narratives. It’s not often that you find comics drawn in this photorealistic style, at least to this degree. The closest I can think of something similar is what you might find in some manga, although there the more naturalistic, detailed art is found mostly in the setting or objects surrounding the characters. Something that you’d fine in Cerebus. But with Stevens’s work, the intricate detail is applied to the characters, as well. Also, I have a preference for realistic storytelling — Karl hates the phrase “slice of life” — so this work is right up my alley.

See pictures, book was screwed up at the printers. 1st print.