If the name Ben Costa sounds familiar, it’s because, yes, he’s the brother of podcast announcer Nate Costa. But he’s also a talented award-winning cartoonist, currently collaborating with James Parks on the webcomic Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo. The tale of a skeleton trying to make it as a bard in a colorful fantasy kingdom is reminiscent of Jeff Smith’s Bone, but with a much harder base in sword and sorcery. The publisher Knopf agrees that it’s a great webcomic, and deserved to be a graphic novel. So on June 6, the publisher will release the first volume, [amazon text=The Road to Epoli&asin=0399556133].
Underneath Rickety’s cheery exterior lies a dark secret hidden from even himself, but don’t let the darkness fool you: this tale is fun from start to finish. To celebrate/advertise the book’s imminent release, Costa and Parks have released a book trailer:
And somehow I missed that there was an earlier full version of the ballad that haunts Rickety’s dreams:
