Press Release
It’s hard being someone’s Mister Right when for a hundred pounds an hour, you’re anyone’s Mister Right Now.
“The Lengths is an important work. It covers topics largely passed over even in prose literature, let alone the diversity-challenged world of comics.” – The New Statesman
A typical twenty-something struggling to transition into adulthood, in a city where everyone seems to have their price, Eddie has abandoned his art school course, his family, his lover, and his friends to follow a muscle-bound male escort into a world of sex, drugs and unrequited love. His new double life, creates quite the identity crisis as he tries to maintain the façade of being a typical ‘generation y’. To his friends, he’s a young man getting out of one serious relationship and into another; but to the people he meets through dating sites, classifieds and smartphone apps, he’s “Ford”.
“What stays with you on completing the comic is a sense of having read something raw, powerful, and very real.” – Forbidden Planet International
Now, he is beginning a tentative romance with an old friend and having to face up to the challenge of being honest in a relationship, about what he’s doing in the weird hours he works, and the lengths he’s willing to go to to please himself and those he loves.
“…Hardiman has created an intelligent comic with thought-provoking characters that can challenge and entertain for a good while yet to come.” – Spike Magazine
This is an intelligent and surprisingly romantic coming-of-age story that deals with gay culture, sex workers, art and just trying to make love work. Developed from original interviews with sex workers, Howard Hardiman gives a genuine voice to the anxieties and concerns of those in the trade.
The Lengths
by Howard Hardiman
with original interview material
Introduction by Brad Fraser
ISBN 9781908030108
Cover Price: £17.99/$27.99
Publication Date: October 2013
Format: 216 pages, b&w, hardcover
Distributed by Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & Europe) and SCB Distributors (Canada & USA)
About the author: Described as ‘suave’ by Simply Knitting Magazine, HOWARD HARDIMAN is a writer and artist who makes comic books about lonely badgers, dog-headed escorts and disabled superheroines. He lives on the Isle of Wight and collects jigsaw puzzle pieces he finds in the street. He is currently artist in residence at Quay Arts’ Jubilee Stores Studio in Newport as a part of their Start-Up scheme.
In 2011, he completed an MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of Art, where his MA project, to make a comic based on interviews with male escorts in London, was picked up for distribution. The eight-part series, The Lengths, has received rave reviews in magazines from the New Statesman to Bizarre.
Brad Fraser is a Canadian playwright, director and cultural commentator, most notably of issues within the LGBTQ community.
