Self Help, a California noir miniseries with a wicked sense of humor Launches this June from Image

Novelists and writing duo Owen King and Jesse Kellerman team up with artist Marianna Ignazzi, colorist Fabiana Mascolo, and designer/letterer Ian Chagren for the upcoming five-issue comic book miniseries titled, Self Help. This new launch out of the Syzygy line at Image Comics will hit shelves on June 19.

Chagren will also be creating unique popular-crime-fiction-inspired logos and design pages for each issue. Issue #1’s design pays homage to legendary Hollywood noir poster artist, Saul Bass.

A California noir story with a wicked sense of humor, Self Help is a surreal and colorful world populated with two-faced talk-show hosts, cheerful Finnish mobsters, bloodthirsty white supremacists, snide English butlers, and panther-wielding Euro-trash assassins.

In Self Help, readers are introduced to down-on-his-luck rideshare driver Jerry Hauser, whose existence is a bleak one…especially because every fare he picks up tells him how much he looks like ultra-successful self-help guru Darren Hart. But in a twist of fate, Jerry is given the chance of a lifetime…which, if he’s not careful, may well end his lifetime. So begins this rollicking and gleefully lurid pulp crime story.

From there the story races ahead at an ever-increasing speed, and with an ever-increasing body count, as Jerry assumes his rival’s identity, fights to keep a lid on the murder, fends off the Euro-gangsters to whom Darren was heavily indebted, placates Darren’s calculating assistant Cassandra, and rebuilds his relationship with his estranged ex-wife Michelle and daughter Amelia. Oh, and he also needs to avoid the white supremacists that hold Jerry’s personal marker—except to them, he’s Danny McClure—and keep up his Drÿvÿr rating.

Self Help #1

Self Help #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, June 19:

  • Cover A by Ignazzi – Lunar Code 0424IM224
  • Cover B by Stephen Byrne – Lunar Code 0424IM225
  • Cover C (1:15 copy incentive) by Steven Russell Black – Lunar Code 0424IM226
  • Cover D (1:25 copy incentive) by Ashley Wood – Lunar Code 0424IM227