Adherent

One of NYPL’s Best New Comics of 2023 for Adults.

A poignant fable about a young woman who is captivated by a set of recently discovered notebooks and leaves her isolated community to search for their author--a journey that ultimately makes her question what she wants and what she’s willing to leave behind.

The residents of an isolated village in a dreamlike world scavenge for supplies in the surrounding forest, collecting scattered items left over from a time long past. No one strays far from this community, fearing what may lie beyond it. When they find a stack of notebooks by an unknown author, a young villager becomes obsessed with their contents. She sets out on a quest to find the writer. As she ventures into the unknown, she discovers a world both barren and increasingly complex. The closer she gets to her goal, the more she realizes that the encounter she’s been seeking probably won’t be what she wanted.

In Adherent, Chris W. Kim (Herman by Trade, Strays) brings us a fabular tale that examines the ways we connect--and the ideas and places we value--in our own increasingly disconnected world.

Chris W. Kim is a cartoonist and illustrator from Toronto, Ontario. Influenced by comics and animation, he pursued his interest in drawing at OCAD University where he studied fine art before switching to illustration. He has worked for clients such as The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Popular Mechanics and Maisonneuve Magazine, among others. His first graphic novel, Herman by Trade (SelfMadeHero), was published in 2017, followed by Strays (SelfMadeHero) in 2021, and Adherent (Conundrum Press) in 2023.