Drawn & Quarterly, the Montreal-based comics publisher, announced that Theo Ellsworth (Capacity, Sleeper Car, and The Understanding Monster) would adapt Jeff VanderMeer's short story Secret Life as an OGN. VanderMeer (Annihilation, Borne, Veniss Underground), a long-time fiction writer, hinted at a comics project a week ago, and it would appear this is it. VanderMeer isn't new to comics; he introduced the first volume of Wasteland years and years ago. Ben Templesmith also did the cover to a limited edition of Shriek: An Afterword, one of VanderMeer's three Ambergris novels.
Secret Life cover by Theo Ellsworth
Drawn & Quarterly describes the book to OGN like this:
To the west: trees. To the east: a mall. North: fast food. South: darkness. And at the centre is The Building, an office building wherein several factions vie for dominance. Inside, the walls are infiltrated with vines, a mischief of mice learn to speak English, and something eerie happens once a month on the fifth floor. In Secret Life, the Nebula and Shirley Jackson award-winning author Jeff VanderMeer's ecological speculations overlap with Theo Ellsworth's deep-layered style to create a mind-bending narrative that defamiliarizes the mundanity of office work and makes the arcane rituals of The Building home.
With deft insight, Secret Life observes the sinister individualism of bureaucratic settings in contrast with an unconcerned natural world. As the narrative progresses you may begin to suspect that the world Ellsworth has brought to life with hypnotic visuals is not so secret after all; in fact, it's uncannily similar to our own.
A page from the forthcoming Secret Life adaptation.
Drawn & Quarterly has acquired world rights to the graphic novel Secret Life by cartoonist Theo Ellsworth, adapted from the story by Nebula Award-winning author Jeff VanderMeer. Secret Life will be published in Fall 2021.
D+Q Acquiring Editor Tom Devlin explained, "It was such an honour to be approached about this project. Theo's intricate drawing style is absolutely entrancing and Jeff's stories are so rich with visual imagery that they almost demand adaptation. I can't imagine a better pairing." Devlin went on to say, "Secret Life is based on Jeff's story, which was first published over a decade ago. The whole graphic novel is set in one building where the building itself is the protagonist, ever morphing and growing. Jeff's story blends horror with social commentary as Theo's swirling, dense pen-lines articulate the suffocating qualities of the place, increasing the visceral gut punch of Secret Life's narrative twists."
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