A Graphic Cosmogony

There is something instinctual, almost primal about making and reading/viewing comics, especially highly graphic ones with few or no words. So what better means than comics, the distillation of illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, meditational paintings and decorated scrolls and all of humanities´ narrative arts, to tell that oldest story of them all, the story of creation? The Biblical creation myth proposes that God created the world in seven days, or six plus one day off to chill out, so in that spirit the two-dozen cartoonist-shamans corralled into this compendium were given just seven pages to devise their own version of how we all got here. Some draw on tales from ancient traditions, such as Norse or Ainu legends or a universal mother´s womb of all things. Some illustrate mainly in stylised profiles, harking back to Egyptian tomb walls or Grecian friezes. Others mostly ignore previous versions -- ´It´s been done to death. You have to make it up´ -- and take more oblique or satirical stabs. They try explaining the origins of everything as a magician´s act, a simulation game, a failed school assignment, a yurt-dweller´s break from boredom, the tears of a grief-stricken stag or the contents of a cyclops´ vacuum-cleaner bag or the head of Derek. It´s up to you whether you believe such ´dubious facts´ as ´ghost energy´, ´ether-juice´ or the heresies of the ´Masters of the Universe´. Entire world faiths have been built on equally unlikely accounts. Perhaps if enough readers of this volume start believing in certain stories, they might cause a spate of new religions to spring up based upon them. Pull up a rock and gather round the flickering fire -- the universe is about to be born again...