Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the acquisition of the only graphic novel written by — and possibly the last unseen work of his to be published — the innovative Beat writer and Naked Lunch author, William S. Burroughs.

This lost masterpiece, Ah Pook Is Here, created in collaboration with artist Malcolm McNeill in the 1970s, will be published in the summer of 2011 as a spectacularly packaged two-volume, hinged set, along with Observed While Falling, McNeill's memoir documenting his collaboration with one of America's most iconic authors.


Ah Pook Is Here first appeared in 1970 under the title The Unspeakable Mr. Hart as a monthly comic strip written by Burroughs and drawn by the British cartoonist and painter Malcolm McNeil in the English magazine Cyclops.

When the publication folded, Burroughs and McNeill decided to develop the project into a full-length, Word/Image novel (the term "graphic novel" had not yet been coined). Burroughs was 56 at the time, McNeill 23.

The book was conceived as a single painting in which text and images were combined in whatever form seemed appropriate to the narrative. It was conceived as 120 continuous pages that would "fold out."

Such a book was, at the time, unprecedented, and no publisher was willing to take a chance and publish a "graphic novel." Burroughs and McNeill finally abandoned the project after collaborating on it for 7 years.

"It is singularly appropriate that after championing literate comics and the graphic novel form for over 30 years, Fantagraphics Books should bring a literary collaboration between one of America's most distinctive writers and his exemplary hand-chosen artist to light," says Fantagraphics Publisher and acquiring editor Gary Groth.



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