Broken Frontier

Oni Press is pleased to announce the February release of GRAY HORSES, a new graphic novel by Hope Larson, creator of the critically acclaimed SALAMANDER DREAM.

Noemie has left her childhood home to study abroad, where she finds new friends and new challenges. She also finds herself with new dreams, as she begins to have vivid visions of a life as a noble stallion, helping a sick girl. Do her dreams have something to do with the changes in her life? And will what she learns in her dreams affect her journey?

“After we read SALAMANDER DREAM, we knew we had to do a book with Hope,” James Lucas Jones, Oni Editor in Chief commented. “There’s a deceptive simplicity to her work that disguises the depth of the stories she tells, and they stay with you long after you finish reading.”

For GRAY HORSES, Larson drew on a number of different experiences from her life.

“The story really draws elements from my first years away from home, at college in Rochester, NY and especially in Chicago,” Larson explained. “So many strange things happen when you're alone in a city for the first time, and I wanted to remember them.
The bakery in the book is based on an actual bakery in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago. It's an unassuming place, a little rough around the edges, but when I'd pass it at night the baker was often in there alone, and there'd be a three-foot bread crocodile or a little curled up bread snake (with a forked tongue and all!) in the window. I always took friends by the place to show them, but on those days the display always seemed to be what you'd expect, with nothing out of the ordinary.”

She continued, “Noémie is a bit like me. She's brave enough to leave home explore the world, but once she gets there she isn't sure what to do. Despite being an ocean away from home she would find away to maintain her insular life if it wasn't for people like Anna making an effort to way to find their way in. She has to learn to assert herself and make the most of her opportunities, and let go of things (like a breakup) that are keeping her from opening up.”

The bilingual element of Noemie’s life also comes from Larson’s personal experience.

“The use of language was one of my first ideas for the book,” Larson commented. “I spent some time in France as a kid, and living in a place where your mother tongue is not that primary language makes you aware of how it's tied to your sense of self. Even when I was fluent in French I dreamed mostly in English, and, when speaking in French, I'd snap back into English without realizing it if I got really mad. I wanted to show what that feels like, and make it a real barrier, which is why I chose to write most of Noémie's thoughts in French with English subtitles, and not to just use punctuation to indicate which language was being spoken.”

“Hope has the ability to take personal observations and expand them to encompass a universal experience while keeping the whole thing very intimate,” Jones concluded. “Any one can read GRAY HORSES and take something from it, and I hope that they will.”

GRAY HORSES will feature 112 pages of black, tan, and white art. With a cover price of $14.95, it will ship to comic stores in February 2006 with an ISBN of 1-932664-36-X