Dangerous Minds friends Century Guild announce the release of “The Fracture of the Universal Boy,” a new graphic novel by Michael Zulli, years in the making. Zulli was a regular artist on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
Speaking of focus, the kind of focus that makes electrons shudder, imagine being at the top of your game for decades. Say, being one of the go-to artists on something as seminal and powerful as Neil Gaiman?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s epic graphic novel cycle The Sandman. Imagine at the close of that era professional and personal difficulties decimating that ledge overlooking the valley, and as you fall down, hitting every rock and branch on the way down- no, the rocks weren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t leaping out of their way to break skin, it only felt like it- and reaching a point creatively where you were forced to examine the root, the core of what you believed in as an artist.
Now imagine living in seclusion for three harsh years of constant self-examination, painstakingly scripting, curling lines and tiny crosshatches with pen and ink on paper, each page never quite done for weeks on end?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ And at the end of three years of determination and dedication, with over two hundred pages, twenty or so not making that final culling of the scythe. Imagine THAT kind of focus.
What Michael Zulli has crafted with his masterpiece The Fracture of the Universal Boy is- and I say this without the slightest hesitation- more aligned with Symbolist literature such as Joris-Karl Huysman?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s 1891 novel Le Bas (?¢‚Ǩ?ìDown There?¢‚Ǩ¬ù or ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe Damned?¢‚Ǩ¬ù) than anything else I can think of. The poet St?ɬ©phane Mallarm?ɬ© articulated the scope of the term Symbolism, stating ?¢‚Ǩ?ìSuggestion, that is the dream?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, and the dream/awake//surreal/hyper-real elements that make up The Fracture of the Universal Boy have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve ever seen happen in comics.
Sounds like an underground classic in the making.