Small press Uncivilized Books has three new graphic novels on its Spring 2024 catalog, with three very different stories all set in the 20th century.
Evil Eyes Sea, by Ozge Samanci, is set during the 1995 elections in Turkey and starts with two women witnessing a suspicious death while scuba diving. There is no returning to normal after that, especially at a time when Istanbul is riven by political, social, and economic turmoil. “The autobiographically-inspired story I tell in Evil Eyes Sea emerged from my college years in Istanbul, my quirky friends, and my struggles with being a young woman in Turkey’s male-centric culture,” Samanci said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “In this book, I share a window into a country where narrow political views limit personal power—a place that can be beautiful, but also cruel.” Samanci is also the creator of the memoir Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey, published in 2015 by FSG. Evil Eyes Sea will be released on March 26, 2024, as a 270-page paperback with an MSRP of $24.95.
Maple Terrace is Noah Van Sciver’s memoir of being a comic-crazed kid in the 1990s, growing up in a large and often struggling family at a time when comics were populated with oversized, over-gunned characters and the comics themselves were skyrocketing in value thanks to a new wave of speculators. For ambitious youngsters, that meant that an embossed foil cover could be a golden ticket—until it wasn’t. Van Sciver’s earlier memoir, One Dirty Tree, also published by Uncivilized was nominated for a 2019 Eisner Award, and he has garnered several other nominations for Fante Bukowski and other works. Uncivilized initially published Maple Terrace as three single-issue comics, the third of which will be released on November 8, 2023, and the collected edition will be a 120-page hardcover slated for May 21, 2024, with an MSRP of $24.95.
The Sickness, vol. 1, by Jenna Cha and Lonnie Nadler, is a horror story that spans four decades: In 1945, a teenager rebels against relentless post-war nationalism, and in 1955, a doctor is searching for the source of a new disease. Both are stalked by both the sickness and a mysterious figure, known as The Man, who follows them everywhere. This ambitious graphic novel sets a body-horror saga against the historical and pop-culture backdrop of the latter half of the 20th century. Nadler and Cha also collaborated on Black Stars Above, published by Vault, and Nadler is one of the creators of Golgotha Motor Mountain, which was announced by IDW in 2022 (see “IDW Launches Nine Original Comics Series”). Uncivilized is releasing The Sickness as single-issue comics as well, with #4 due out in December 2023. The first volume of the collected edition, a 160-page paperback, is slated for release on June 18, 2024, with an MSRP of $24.95.Source: ICv2
