Philip K Dick was part prophet part fiction writer, he had had a number of mystical experiences where he believed he was being contacted by a God named “Valis” and he isn’t sure if this god is god with capital G or just a being much more powerful than him screwing with him.
I had always been a fan of the movies adapted of his works like Minority Report and a Scanner Darkly but I never considered looking deeper into his work until I got the idea that I would begin adapting short stories into comics in order to get experience drawing comics and learn more about storytelling and writing for my own comic.
When I saw that Philip K Dick has a large amount of work in public domain I thought, boom there we go we got something to work with. But I had no idea this strange rabbit hole I would fall into when I started looking into his work. Its something I won’t mention now but I’ll be mentioning as I explore his work here on this blog along with other Sci fi Fantasy works of art.
So creepy sci fi horror comics it will be then! I never really cared much about doing a superhero comic but I love the early 50s Sci Fi magazine style of “Eerie” and thought this would be a perfect writer to adapt for me. The end result is a free 50 page comic that I left a link for you at the bottom of the article for.
He later went on to write a book entitled Valis inspired by these events. His characters are what intrigue me about his stories, unlike when we think of Sci Fi today our mind immediately jumps to superheroes and villains, but not PKD’s work.
His characters are ordinary car mechanics and tv salesman that some how catch a glimpse of a parallel world or notice a glitch in the matrix and its not clear to the reader or the character if they have gone insane or have they had a spiritual awakening. And what is the difference? Does the light of God’s mind not completely obliterate our own sense of consciousness?
Philip K Dick’s work reminds me of this thought I’ve always had that we go about our daily lives driving to work, sitting in traffic, doing daily menial tasks and we think it means so much but truthfully at the center of our galaxy is a black hole and this black hole destroys everything and bends reality into something unrecognizable that would destroy you as well. Our societal daily lives feel like lies we hold on to to keep collectively stick our heads in the sand so we don’t have to deal with the fact that no-one knows what is going on.
If you missed the post with the comic and would like to check it out you can find a download link here. I plan on doing a continuous series of PKD work analysis and comics so people who subscribe will have those comics automatically delivered to their email every couple of weeks:
https://wesleyedwardsart.gumroad.com