Broken Frontier

For Agnes Quill, talking to the dead is the easiest part of her life. As the heir to her great-grandfather's detective business, the sixteen-year-old Agnes must solve mysteries in the haunted, cobble-stoned and foggy city Legerdemain.

It's a lot of responsibility for a teenaged girl, but Agnes is devoted to continuing her family's legacy. As she solves the strange cases her clients bring to her, Legerdemain's dearly departed citizens help, hinder, or just plain annoy her. Working with, against or in spite of these ghosts, Agnes frees trapped spirits, cursed souls and possessed relatives, finds disappearing pets, and confronts decapitated scientists, ambitious zombies, and other supernatural menaces, in Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery.

Dave Roman's creation Agnes Quill first appeared in a series of web comics, now being collected in print form by SLG Publishing. The 136-page, black-and white trade paperback will collect all of the Agnes Quill stories, which are illustrated by Jason Ho, Jen Wang, Jeff Zornow, and Eisner-nominee Raina Telgemeier. The stories in Agnes Quill are stand-alone but develop a larger mythology within Legerdemain. Like Agnes and the city in which she lives, the stories are sometimes dark and grim, sometimes blackly humorous, sometimes playful--and are often all of these.

Each artist is essential to depicting the different facets of Agnes and her world, says creator Dave Roman (Jax Epoch, Teen Boat, Flight 3). "All of the artists who worked on the book brought their own sensibilities to the character and setting," he said. "Jason's art style is very dark and elegant, Raina's art is really animated and fluid, Jeff's is dynamic and insanely detailed, Jen's is full of raw emotion, while my own is probably more quirky and cute. They all compliment the character and help to make Agnes Quill feel like she exists beyond any one person's interpretation."

Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery will be published in October 2006 and retail for $10.95. It can be ordered now from Diamond Comics under the item code AUG06 2936.