A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Miami Herald

Master storyteller McCulloch’s wise and poignant tale of Irish immigrants coming to America, weaving three different time periods in parallel, is soulfully illustrated by veteran artist Doran. It’s a heartfelt and genuine story of human emotions and drama; nothing post-modern, snarky or ironic here, just believable behavior depicted with lyrical dialog and rich imagery. You’ll want to re-read it as soon as you finish to savor and reflect upon the transcendent intelligence and artistic vision responsible for this masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Wall Street Journal

A sweeping, detailed, beautifully drawn story of love, betrayal and survival, with a small but crucial touch of the supernatural. It’s deliberately paced and slow to build, but the payoff, as the three stories converge, is worth it.

Comics Bulletin

Colleen Doran’s art is magnificent and often breathtaking in Amerikay. She has a glorious eye for detail that seems borne out in everything from the shoes that the immigrant men wear to the vast cityscapes that she draws. There are several cityscape views that are absolutely breathtaking. Despite that eye for detail, Doran is also terrific at drawing the characters in the book. Even secondary characters seem full of life and energy, occasionally threatening to jump off the page.

Bay Area Reporter

The illustrations are colorful and historically informed; the characters appealing, and the degradations and abuses of grinding poverty are never downplayed. In true cliffhanger fashion, the key to the stories’ through-line is not revealed until the book’s final pages. It’s a satisfying spellbinder that speaks truths about the 20th-century immigrant experience – even the gay one.

School Library Journal (also picked Gone to Amerikay as one of the top three graphic novels so far for 2012.)

Not only is this excellent fiction and beautifully rendered art, but the creators have included piles of factual information without making any of it seem more than essential to the story’s unfolding.

Ain’t It Cool

A story that is awe inspiring in its grandness of scope, tender in its examination of the immigrant struggle to achieve the American dream and eerily sweet with how it ties the three time periods together….I can continue to gush about Gone to Amerikay, but one truly needs to hold and imbibe this book to “get it.” There is not a wasted word or panel in this tale…Doran is my new goddess; you could take away every word bubble in Gone to Amerikay and spend days simply soaking in the lush detail of each scene and examining the stark emotion on the faces of each character.

Kapow

Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.

Scripps

(GTA is) not only a terrific graphic novel, it is a quintessentially American one…(Doran) is an artist at the peak of her powers, full-throated where power is called for; nuanced and subtle for emotional scenes; detailed, fluid and confident throughout. Doran almost makes you regret her strong storytelling, which gently seduces you into flowing through the three intertwining stories, because you want to stop and gaze at the pictures…I can see Gone to Amerikay being used in English classes to explore story structure; history classes to illustrate themes of immigration and the American Dream; and art classes to teach Doran’s masterful approach to storytelling, blocking and rendering. But, most of all, I expect to see it on a lot of domestic bookshelves as a well-thumbed favorite story.

The Gay Comics List

Doran shows once again that she’s one of the most versatile artists working nowadays …I must also say that José Villarrubia’s colors are stunning, as detailed and evocative as Doran’s completely researched recreation of two rather different decades of New York life. McCulloch’s writing is dense and rewards multiple readings…Gone to Amerikay is a graphic novel I’d recommend both to seasoned readers who appreciate superior storytelling and to casual readers who are looking for interesting gay characters and themes in comics. It might be one of the best things I’ve read in a while, and I’ll certainly read it more than a few times.

Page 45

Derek McCulloch manages to give this work such intimate depth and real emotional content that many supposedly worthy prose works struggle to achieve… And then in perfect harmony…with the writing is the art. The beautifully clean lines perfectly capture the privations and misery of 1870′s slum life whilst simultaneously dramatising the up-and-coming bohemian bustle of the Greenwich Village social scene of 1960. This is a fabulous work…a mini-masterpiece.

Your support is greatly appreciated.

In this economy, we understand not everyone can afford to buy books. Please encourage your local library to stock Gone to Amerikay for you. We love libraries.

YOU CAN BUY IT IN THIS GREAT IRISH COMIC THEMED PACKAGE HERE~! OFFER GOOD UNTIL DECEMBER 8

Ciara O’Dwyer is a young woman raising a daughter alone in the Five Points slums of 1870; Johnny McCormack is a struggling actor drawn to the nascent folk music movement in Greenwich Village 1960; and Lewis Healy is a successful Irishman who’s come to present-day Manhattan on his wife’s anniversary-present promise to reveal the connection between him and them. The mystery originates with Ciara’s runaway husband, who disappeared after promising to join her in America, and carries into midcentury when Johnny, devastated by an unexpected romance and a lost shot at musical fame, gets a supernatural visitor.

Gone to Amerikay will be out in March. That is only two months from now. Have you asked your store to order it? Please do. Here is our lovely cover.

The graphic novel Gone to Amerikay is written by Derek McCulloch, with art by me. Our handsome colors are provided by Jose Villarubia.

For more information on Gone to Amerikay, click on the tag below.

The book is now at the printer, and preview copies elicited this fine response.

“Ghost story or detective fiction? History or
mythology? Drawing on the freewheeling spirit
of Irish and Irish-American popular culture,
Gone To aMerIKaY is all of these. A tale that
takes place simultaneously in 1870, 1960 and 2010,
it recognizes that though enormous changes have
taken place over time in the relationship between
the New World and the Old Country, some things,
like love, justice and respect, are timeless and
imperative. With thrilling illustrations, rich with
the color and mood of these passions, you will find
yourself unable to avoid lingering at length on them
before picking up the story again.”
— Philip Chevron
The Pogues

“Gone To aMerIKaY’s a wonderful story, lushly
illustrated, full of music and passion, twists and turns,
beautifully evoking the Irish immigrant experience
in three different times and sewing them all together
brilliantly at the end. A real treat, for those who
love New York history, or just a great story.”
— Kevin Baker
(Paradise Alley, Dreamland, LUNA PARK)

“Gone To aMerIKaY is not just a great book,
it’s an important book. It uses the immigrant
experience to talk about us, who we are, how and
why we came here, with some echoes of where we
might be going. The art is superb, containing some
of the best and most evocative images of the period
you’re ever going to see, and the story is wide in
scope but intimate in its details as it flashes forward
and backward in time. Forget the hype, this is going
to be THE book of 2012.”
— J. Michael Straczynski
(SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE,
Babylon Five, Changeling)

Thank you, gentleman, for your very kind words.

Please ask for Gone to Amerikay at your local bookstore. If this book does well, publishers will make more of them. And they will hire Derek and I to make them. That would be wonderful. I loved doing this book. Projects like this are why I got into comics. There aren’t enough projects like this, though. We should fix that.

Listen to a nice discussion of Gone to Amerikay, featuring Derek and me HERE.

Here is a handy order Amazon link button, but please always consider your bookstore first.

Thank you.