Gaylord Phoenix

(Paperback)

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Description

The Ignatz Award winner for Outstanding Graphic Novel, Gaylord Phoenix follows the danger-fraught journeys of the titular creature. Edie Fake confronts the reader with violent and unexpected manifestations of sexual connection and romantic possession as the Gaylord Phoenix searches for his lost love, his origins and his place in the world.

Reviews

"Fake is a trans artist, and his graphic novel seamlessly bends gender, melding male quest narrative with female romance to create shimmering fantasies; the visual analog of shoegaze if shoegaze were queerer and more disturbing. From the moir-patterned cover to the mysterious stenciled speech bubbles, everything about Gaylord Phoenix is ravishing." - The Atlantic

"In her book Belonging: A Culture of Place, bell hooks writes about returning home to rural Kentucky after a long academic career in New York City. In one chapter she discusses porches, the ubiquitous womb-like structures attached to the front and back of any rural home, writing: "A perfect porch is a place where the soul can rest." In the same way, perfect comics can give openly and sincerely to the reader a place to rest their soul. This is Fake's most powerful talent and his work's best quality." - LA Review of Books

"Other more cryptic pieces require some work from readers to puzzle out, but that's just part of the fun of Fake's oeuvre: his comics maintain a playfully naughty mystery. (Appropriately, the book is dedicated in part to "the Queerdos out there.") Fake deconstructs gender and human anatomy, sex and desire, then puts them back together again, on his own messy, artful terms. This provocative graphic collection pushes boundaries, and then breaks them open." - Publishers Weekly

"The Evanston, Illinois, native, who now lives in the California High Desert just outside of Joshua Tree, has something of a double career. He is probably best known as a force in the alternative comics scene, with Gaylord Phoenix, his 2011 book about a nonbinary humanoid on a journey of self-discovery, winning the Ignatz Award for outstanding graphic novel... ...Even in the less direct works, however, Fake's overall intent seems clear: to conjure a vibrant space where freedom of gender expression can reign." - Art in America

Author Bio

Edie Fake was born in Chicagoland in 1980. He graduated from the RISD in 2002 and has since clocked time in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Baltimore. He was one of the first recipients of Printed Matter's Awards for Artists and his comic, Gaylord Phoenix, won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel. In 2011 he helped found the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) and writes reviews for the blog Book By Its Cover.