Broken Frontier

Ten years ago, Tommy Kovac began his first comic series, Stitch, a story about a lonely rag doll searching for his true identity. In March 2009 SLG Publishing will re-release the collection of the four-issue series, in digest size with new material, including an illustrated prose epilogue for the story.

Stitch begins with a rag doll awaking in a creepy attic in a fog of amnesia. He soon discovers other toys there with him -- rag dolls that he recognizes as his sister and cousins but who have no memory of him, the unhinged and stinky Yum Tum Bear, a sock monkey with an itchy posterior, and a menacing pair of fairies called the Benders. Stitch finds comfort in the companionship of Simon, the handsomest doll boy, but he is still troubled by unanswered questions. Why does Granny Pairley keep Stitch and his rag doll cousins captive in the playroom? Did they once have lives outside the attic walls? Stitch will have to find the courage to defy the other toys, who tell him "You're just a stupid doll," and find answers.

Tommy Kovac looks at Stitch as a marker in his development as an artist. "It seems like the quest for identity is obviously my own journey in defining myself as a creator," he said. "Whether I intend to or not, I always wear my heart on my sleeve. I wish I knew how not to do that! But there it is."

Kovac has gone on to write the critically acclaimed series Wonderland and write and draw the series Autumn. The whimsy of Wonderland and moody magic of the latter are both present in both the story and hatched black-and-white art of Stitch.

A full mini-interview with Kovac about the re-release of Stitch is on the SLG website. Stitch is a 136-page trade paperback, and it can be pre-ordered at comic book stores with the Diamond code JAN093944.