7” x 10”, 144 pages. Published in 2020. $15 Cover Price. Full-color cover with black and white interior on natural paper. Perfect bound paperback.
"After suffering a psychotic breakdown triggered by the election of a powerful demagogue, Beth follows her husband Jason to a remote cabin where the two try to make their own world in spite of the increasingly volatile political climate. While the couple are trying their best to overcome Beth’s break from reality, otherworldly arbiters conspire to change their lives forever."
WOODS is a horror story that confronts the traumas surrounding a loved one’s battles with mental illness, questions the struggle of individual engagement in the collective, and imagines the possibilities of a world that transcends beyond earthly understanding.
about the artist (from goodreads):
Mike Freiheit (FRY-Hite) is a cartoonist, teaching artist and illustrator living in Chicago, IL. He studied illustration at School of Visual Arts in NYC, and for nine months lived in South Africa at a primate sanctuary, where he cooked food for the monkeys and human volunteers. His first graphic novel is a memoir based on this experience called Monkey Chef: A Love Story.
excerpts from Ryan Carey's excellent review in Four Color Apocalypse:
"The “city slicker” couple at the center of cartoonist Mike Freiheit’s new graphic novel, Woods, moved to a remote cabin hoping to find that better world after the election of a certain unnamed right-wing demagogue helped engender a complete mental breakdown in one of them, but they soon discovered that going “off the grid” looks a lot easier on YouTube videos than it actually is in real life.As far as horror yarns go, then, this is as topical as they come — and as eminently relatable. You get where these people are coming from because you know these people — you may even be these people. Their desires, motivations, aims, and problems all hit home. Their struggles are our struggles, their quiet triumphs and less-than-quiet tragedies not so much “ripped from the headlines” as ripped from the stories that will never make the headlines. Two people who want nothing more than to outrun an encroaching darkness from which there never really was any escape...
And while we’re on the subject of darkness — Freiheit saturates his images with black tones that evoke Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and accentuates them with graphite-smudge grays that bring to mind criminally underappreciated UK cartoonist Carol Swain. This feels like a terrifying story, but even more importantly looks like one — and it represents a quantum leap outside his comfort zone for a guy who’s best known for poignantly self-deprecating autobio work. Much as I loved Monkey Chef — and love it I surely did — this is a beast of an entirely different sort, and demonstrates a visual and narrative versatility that frankly wasn’t even hinted at in the past. if you think you know what to expect from a Mike Freiheit comic, think again — and then think yet again after that."