A dead man is found on the beach in 1948, warmly clothed in the heat of summer. Lying on the sand, the labels cut out of his clothes, and no identification, money or any other means of identifying him. With time, he becomes known as Somerton Man, after the area of Adelaide, Australia he was found in. And while there has been speculation, investigation and publicity in profusion, little has ever been established to say who the man was, what he was doing there, or how he came to be killed. Somerton Man is a graphic novel that tells this strange and unresolved story.
The story tells part of what is known, and provides some of its own speculation; but it's also the story of two authors, each of whom believes they have created the other as a character in their own Somerton Man graphic novel. As they write, encounter others and argue with each other, Somerton Man becomes a story about the problem of telling a story in a media saturated world.
Somerton Man will be released in serialized form, as new chapters are completed. When new chapters come online, you'll be able to read them, explore the elements that make up the drawing, and see the script up to that point.
The technique depends on equal measures of traditional pen and ink, and computer-based ways of assembing the finished pages from parts. That means that each page can be gone back to, and seamlessly changed or updated. So the early chapters may alter as later ones change the circumstances of the story.
All the parts will be made available as freely-downloadable open-source elements that you can use to retell the story, or tell your own stories with.
I hope to finance this project through reader contributions, and the sale of limited-edition letterpress posters that will be individually inked to complete the washes, signed and numbered. But the intent is to make the actual story available free, via this website. Eventually, a print-run of the completed book is anticipated, some time after 2012.