Monday 26 August 2019

In Preview - ‘A Hill To Cry Home’ by Gareth A Hopkins and Erik Blagsvedt.




‘A Hill To Cry Home’

Created by Gareth A Hopkins and Erik Blagsvedt.

(A chapter from the upcoming ‘Explosive Sweet Freezer Razors.’)

20 pages.


‘Ghosts are real and they are fucked off.’

This is a tensely poetical ghost story that approaches the story with a combination of abstract art and is told in plain short verses and styles of abstracted language. It is also the sort of comic that will mean something entirely different to the reader at each pass. It is coincidentally dark and yet with a distinct character that will draw you in and art that is a genuine pleasure to watch.

I’m a fan of this comic. It is freshly original and also portrays a darkness in image and turn of phrase. 




‘A Hill To Cry Home’ opens on a walk through a house, turning off all the appliances and settling into a warm bath. 

I’ve read this myself at least a few times and come to different opinions of the meaning of this sequence at every attempt. Is it a suicide? The careful turning off the electrical ever-present hum in the house seems like a final moment of peace before a bath time wrist slashing? Or is it a peace that is needed to commune with spirits? The modern world is turned off to allow for the world elsewhere and elsewhen to appear?




The world of the strange and ghostly does appear but not in a way that you’d expect. The creators pull you over with the use of the background swirling/germinating/dilating/growing and developing black and white art with punches of colour. Then they play with you perceptions by changing the text box colour and moving into a combination of bullet delivered abstract language and paragraphs that almost make you believe you understand....

It’s a shame that this is a small lysergic delivery of a larger overdose. I look forward to the full/next instalment soon.


‘This is a story about ghosts.’


Find out more about the work of Mr Hopkins by visiting http://www.grthink.com/ and finding him on Twitter @grthink

You can buy this upon release over at https://grthink.bigcartel.com/

The book will get a physical (and spiritual) release at the upcoming Hackney Comic + Zine Fair on Sunday the 8th of September - London Field Arches, Hackney, London, E8 3SB. https://www.hackneycomicfair.com/


Many thanks for reading.

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