Crossing Empty Quarter & Other Stories

Edition excerpt from Crossing Empty Quarter & Other Stories (2009): Collecting over thirty short stories by London-based writer/artist Carol Swain, Crossing the Empty Quarter and Other Stories is Swain's first career-spanning retrospective! The 'graphic lit' love children of Gabriel García Márquez and Raymond Carver, Swain's comics first appeared in the late 1980s, and she has since contributed to over twenty anthologies across the globe. Her introspective, boldly executed, and visually unique works are peppered with magical realism, autobiography, and tenacious punk attitudes. While Swain's tales cover a wide range of emotions, politics, and societal ills, they are all tied together with an art style that is universally appealing and undeniably unique. Two bran- new color stories, created for this hardcover volume, are featured in a special color section. Alan Moore describes Carol Swain's work as 'dark and full of life, like soil . . . a perfect example of what modern comics are capable of if they only try.'