Eric by Tom Manning
The Skinny
Eric is the second major comics work by the acclaimed creator of Runoff, Tom Manning. Currently in-production, the first 80-page Chapter of Eric is complete, and the rest of the story in the process of being plotted.
Described as The Big Lebowski meets Jacob’s Ladder, Eric is a story of Americana, and the horrific implications found just beneath its pop and artifice.
The Story
Eric, once a popular musician from the ’60s psychedelic pop scene, is now a drug-addled hippie relic grappling with his irrelevance to a society that has passed him by.
After he publically snaps on live TV while promoting the release of his Greatest Hits album, Eric’s world slowly shifts into a drug-induced alternate reality with sinister undertones.
Ironically, this same public breakdown also propels Eric into newfound stardom – a level of celebrity he’d long desired but is now deeply paranoid about. And for good reason: because as elements from these multiple realities begin to cross over into each other, Eric realizes he may be in the middle of a terrifying conspiracy.
The Style
Tom Manning’s artwork is something to behold: dark, liquid, evocative, and bolstered by a cartoonists’ confidence. The lettering is hand drawn and seems directly inspired by Dave Sim – as much a part of the page layout as the panels themselves. Manning’s work on Eric is cleaner and more daring than he was able to manage with Runoff, offering up a work as polished as it is daring.
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