In 2015, writer Christian De Matteo had an idea unlike any of his others. Despite a childhood of fiendish comic book consumption, his stories always arrived in the form of short prose, novels and screenplays.
This was a comic.
Elsewhere and perhaps simultaneously, artist James Lines also had an idea outside his usual creative space, a children’s book populated by some of the strange denizens who’d elbowed their way into his art. He approached Christian about writing it and Christian traded with him the script he’d written for the comic Finis.
In a few short days, Christian held the most incredible visual realization of his writing he’d ever seen, Pamela, startlingly beautiful in her blood red, wind-trailing scarf, walking past haunted, store-window mannequins on Manhattan’s 49th Street. James had drawn his first-ever comic panel. Fugitive Poems was formed, and they were making comics.
Finis is coming. The story is bursting the seams of their minds, filling pages digital and pulp. Comics are a complex, specific and magic form of storytelling. James and Christian have been working to get it just right.
Here is their opening salvo, short tales of the weird fugitives charging along the sulci and gyri of their lunatic brains. Please enjoy the art they never saw coming.
