Over the past few years, Matt Kindt has written and drawn a series of intriguing, ambitious graphic novels that combine genre-story premises (he’s particularly fond of World War II-era spy stories) with ingenious comics-formalist gestures and clever design. Revolver, out later this week from Vertigo, isn’t about espionage, but it’s a different kind of thriller. It’s about a man named Sam whose life is suddenly divided between two versions of the world, which alternate every morning when he wakes up: one is the safe, quotidian world in which his life has stagnated, and the other is a worst-case-scenario world of terrorist nukes and bird flu. There’s more to it–Kindt uses color design to suggest a lot about his protagonist’s experiences and thoughts–but that’s where it begins. Here’s an exclusive preview of an early scene in the book, in which Sam’s life starts going to hell.
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