Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2025 July 16 • Wednesday

Last year, Gutbrain favorites Peter & Maria Hoey, a fantastic brother and sister team who work in comics and illustration, put out a book called In Perpetuity. It's a longer story than their usual narrative work but has all their calling cards and is very good.

It starts in the after life, a shadowy world with a black sun and not much happening. Our hero, Jim, works in a gas station and smokes a lot of cigarettes. If he goes to a bar and orders a drink, he gets an empty glass. That's what drinks are in the after life.

As you'd expect from the Hoeys, the style of old movies in general and film noir in particular are a big part of this world and pretty soon Jim is involved with some gangster types. Not only did they know Jim when they were all alive, they actually killed him.

Apparently Jim is one of a handful of shades who can go back and forth between the worlds of the living and the dead. And so our story bounces between the After Life (A.L.) and Los Angeles (L.A.).

What starts out as a fairly straightforward story about undead human trafficking soon becomes more complicated as minor and major Greek deities get involved, including Hades, boss of the underworld.

Like the Hoeys' other work, In Perpetuity has an extremelty strong and cohesive style, and strikes the eye as a very "quiet" work in its deployment of colors and compositions.

The story is intirguing and goes to numerous unexpected places. You don't find comics quite this imaginative very often.

You don't have to take my word for it. You can buy it right here!