A collection of one-page comics made during the COVID pandemic will be published by Pantheon in July 2024. Gabe Fowler, owner of the Brooklyn indie comics shop Desert Island, put out a call for entries on the shop’s Instagram in April 2020, when it, and most other stores, had closed their doors due to the lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic. “We all need something positive to think about, and a lot of us have time on our hands…” the post said. “Who wants to make something?” The response was a rush of comics from professionals and amateurs alike, and Fowler has chosen 140 single-page comics for the anthology, Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown, grouping them under three themes: “Shipwrecked,” “Lost at Sea,” and “Rescued.” The 192-page hardcover collection, with an introduction by comics scholar Hilary Chute, will go on sale on July 23, 2024, with an MSRP of $25.00.
Fowler is the organizer of the Comic Arts Brooklyn and the editor of Desert Island’s Eisner-nominated Smoke Signal zine. Francoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman’s Resist, which was distributed at the 2017 presidential inauguration and Women’s March, was a special issue of Smoke Signal (see “‘Resist!’”).
Source: ICV2
