“Flowery Flag Devils” was an anti-American racial slur during the Boxer Rebellion, and speaks to a festering resentment underlying a lot of the back story in this graphic novel, currently in development and signed with Markosia Enterprises, London. In this story, it’s 1986, but it’s a different world than I knew back in those days. Technology is at about a 1920s level with vastly different goals than we would imagine, mysticism and the occult are part of a decent education, and an unapologetic American empire spans most of the globe.

Within the Union, diplomatic disputes are settled in one-on-one cage combat, and the mutual agreement to allow representative diplomats to take on the unseemly burden of violence frees the empire to an unprecedented period of international warlessness — “peace” is not really a good word for it.

Aboard the luxurious White House Airship, the Governor of the Eastern Territories is savagely murdered. Pinkerton Detective Lee Pressman sees unclear traces of the case’s details in his morning meditations even before being assigned to the job. Of course, because this is an outrageous, insane story, the President is strongly implicated in the crime. And things get weird from there.

Line art by Jonathan Kutzer, colors by Erik Hodson.

For more information on this or any of the projects you see here at the garbagefactory, drop a line. I’m glad to talk.