American Indie Comics Publisher Terra Major Teams Acclaimed Noir Novelist with Brazilian Talent
Santa Barbara, CA (3/26/07) ‹ Santa Barbara-based indie comics publisher
Terra Major is set to release its first monthly serialized comic, PHINEAS
POE, a graphic adaptation of Kiss Me, Judas, the first book of the
critically acclaimed noir trilogy Phineas Poe, by author Will Christopher
Baer.
Phineas Poe is a disgraced ex-cop who walks out of a Denver psych ward on
Christmas Eve and heads for the nearest hotel bar, looking to lay low.
Instead, he chats up the wrong girl, a stranger with dark eyes and a scar at
the edge of her mouth. Deadly as she is beautiful, Jude is a freelance organ
thief who leads a willing Phineas upstairs, cuts him open and tosses him to
fate. Reborn in a tub of ice, Phineas chases Jude on a twisted quest for
redemption that rapidly blurs the lines between victim and accomplice, lover
and torturer. From the black snow of Denver to the scorched Texas desert,
Phineas and Jude are plunged ever deeper into the company of pimps,
parasites, pushers, and perverts‹a freefall into deeper and darker planes of
drug-fueled paranoia and erotic obsession.
PHINEAS POE will be illustrated by award-winning MTV Brazil animator
Jefferson Costa, making PHINEAS POE the eighth Terra Major title illustrated
by an up-and-coming Brazilian artist. Costa's American debut was a short
story in GUNNED DOWN, a Western anthology featuring ten Brazilian artists
published by Terra Major in 2005.
Kiss Me, Judas was first published in 1999 (Viking/Penguin) to wide critical
acclaim, including selection by Barnes & Noble as a "Best New Voice." It has
been translated to seven languages, and is now in its fifth domestic edition
(Fall 2006, MacAdam/Cage). A feature film is in the works.
Born in Mississippi in 1966, Will Christopher Baer received an MFA from the
Jack Kerouac School at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO in 1995. Baer has
lived and worked in Memphis, New Orleans, Montreal, Milan, San Francisco and
Los Angeles, working as a cab driver, homeless counselor, college professor,
and journalist. After wrapping the Phineas Poe trilogy with Penny Dreadful
(2001) and Hell's Half Acre (2004), Baer began work on the much-anticipated
GODSPEED (due Fall '07, MacAdam/Cage), described as "apocalyptic
horrornoir." His stories and essays have appeared in numerous print and
online publications, notably Nerve and Bomb. His short story "Deception of
the Thrush," a Phineas Poe retro spin-off featuring femme fatale Jude as a
teenager, was featured in the crime fiction anthology SAN FRANCISCO NOIR
(Akashic Books, '05). A longtime reader and collector of comic books, Baer
hopes the PHINEAS POE comic will be "the best little love story from hell it
can be."
PHINEAS POE #1 will hit comic book stores nationwide in June 2007 and will
also be available for sale online at http://www.terramajor.com. Each issue
will contain 32 pages of story and black-and-white art and will retail for
$5.00 US.
Terra Major is distributed by Diamond Comics Distributors, Inc. PHINEAS POE
#1 is listed this month in their April PREVIEWS catalog for products
shipping in June. Item Code: APR07 3955; Page 342.
See the Previews
Contact the Editor: shane@terramajor.com
Praise for the original novel:
"Starts off bloody and zooms nonstop to a gripping climax‹not for the faint
of heart." -Library Journal
"A paranoid, surreal, drug-induced nightmare full of the hard-boiled noirish
spirit of Raymond Chandler." -San Francisco Chronicle
"..stylish neo-noir paranoia and wall-to-wall deceit, smoky poetics and
sexual obsession." ‹Chicago Tribune
"If Chuck Palahniuk and Brett Ellis got together in Raymond Chandler1s
basement for a drug deal turned cockfight, the unholy result might be
Phineas Poe." -Omaha Pulp
