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Steve Thompson & Gonzalo Ruggieri's First Graphic Novel, Ill Vacation

Steve Thompson and Gonzalo Ruggieri launch their very first graphic novel, Ill Vacation, tomorrow, from Comixology Originals

British writer Steve Thompson and Argentinian artist Gonzalo Ruggieri are making their Comixology Originals debut (yes, this is still a thing on Kindle, honest) this summer with their first long form original graphic novel Ill Vacation, a psychological thriller about two young soldiers who volunteer to take an experimental drug in the 1940s and debuts tomorrow, the 17th of June. Ill Vacation is lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and edited by Rebecca Stone, and in summary tells the stories of "two soldiers left behind to defend a Pacific island receive an experimental drug designed to turn them into unbeatable fighting machines. Instead, it turns their past trauma and nightmares into reality. Now strange lights appear in a blood-red sky, a giant eye floats in the air, and unearthly creatures emerge from the sea to haunt them inside an ever-growing maelstrom of terror."

"Told over the course of four chapters, Ill Vacation follows protagonists Bob and Mary, two young soldiers who want to help their country and its war effort. When they volunteer to take an experimental drug and are left behind to defend an island in the Pacific, things take a terrible turn. Instead of negating their fears, it turns their past trauma and nightmares into reality. Now, strange lights appear in a blood-red sky, a giant eye floats in the air and unearthly creatures emerge from the sea to haunt them inside an ever-growing maelstrom of terror. Can they survive? As we learn of the personal tragedies affecting Mary and Bob, what we see is through their eyes—sometimes it is what's really there and sometimes it's an illusion. Ill Vacation is a haunting, hallucinatory, and mind-bending trip into the effects of war and peace."

"Ill Vacation is about monsters, ghosts, and fear-–things that grip the imagination and Gonzalo has created some of the most unique imagery to bring those elements to the page," says writer Steve. "When Bob and Mary are given the experimental drug-–something designed to make soldiers lose all inhibitions and fear—those drugs have the opposite effect and open their minds to all their fears instead. A dream made real!"

Steve Thompson created and co-edited the 24Panels charity anthology for Image Comics to aid the victims of the Grenfell fire in London. He is the writer of the independent comics Hey! Don't Go!, the zombie horror one-shot, Don't Let Your Dead Ones Die, The Thing That Stops The Badness, SpeedRun, Street-Fighting Woman, and Detective Druid. Gonzalo Ruggieri had drawn for Heavy Metal Magazine, as well as Convert and Rumble from Image Comics, with other work from Sumerian, Red 5, and publishers Fierro, Ultramar, Quimera, Terminus in Argentina, and Cthulhu in Spain.

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