In Remembrance of Philip K Dick
a free comic for fans and my personal tribute to the man who influenced me
Im a fan of Philip K Dick, or is Philip K Dick a fan of me? That sounds like a weird thing to say but ever since I’ve been reading through Philip K Dick’s “Exegesis” and began doing video analysis on Blade Runner, and writing a comic based on one of his short stories. Ive found many odd synchronicities happen in my life.
This isn’t something new to PKD fans, his work has a odd quality to it that it always seems to be perfectly relevant to things going on in our modern times but in a offbeat kind of way. Philip K Dick was one of those Sci fi writers that actually got it right, his books feel like some sort of acid trip in themselves.
If you haven’t seen any of the movies based off his works I recommend you check out Scanner Darkly, minority report or of course Blade Runner. Its actually surprising how accurately Hollywood was able to get adaptations of his books, although his books are far trippier and have lots of ideas that were never used.
As luck would have it on the anniversary of his passing (March 2nd) I also completed my comic based on his public domain short story “The Hanging Stranger”, a creepy story about a man who finds a dead body hanging from a lamppost in the middle of a town. He wonders to himself why hasn’t anyone reacted to this body?
The story stuck with me for a long time for some reason and the idea to turn it into a comic has been in my head for years and now here it is. The story feels like some sort of Twilight Zone episode where we see the protagonist either losing his mind or the world around him is slowly encroaching on his own mental space until he breaks.
This seems to be the central takeaway that Ive gotten from a lot of Philip K Dicks work, and I’m at least honored that I got the chance to adapt his story into a comic. I learned a lot from this experience and I plan on making a series of comics of his work if people really enjoy these. So if youre interested please check out my gum road and let me know what you think:
https://wesleyedwardsart.gumroad.com/l/zaaeo
Awesome to see another PKD mega-fan here. Nice work!