Introduction?

Welcome to the info page for Graves & MacGuffin, a graphic novel project. We've been conceiving and plotting this title for the past few months, and now we're looking for feedback. Ideally, we'd like a publisher to step up and release it, either as a single graphic novel, or as an ongoing series. If you're interested, please contact us and we can discuss the possibilities further.

If not, we're likely going to set it up on its own domain as a webcomic, so don't worry, whatever happens, you'll see this story told. But we believe it's in a unique position to interest both graphic novel and video game fans, and as such, has some significant opportunities, despite the offbeat angle.

What?

Graves & MacGuffin is a noir-ish murder mystery series set in the world of video game development. It features Graves, a video game tester, who rather falls into solving a cornucopia of gruesome or bizarre games industry crimes (such as 'The Case Of The Deadly Disc', our first story.) He does this with the help of MacGuffin, a sardonic virtual pet rodent who exists inside Graves' handheld gaming system. So, think Dashiell Hammett meets Grand Theft Auto meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meets... Pokemon, perhaps?

Story?

As mentioned above, the first Graves & MacGuffin adventure is called 'The Case Of The Deadly Disc', and it starts at Graves' contract game testing job, and the grisly discovery of a dead game coder, with a sharpened game disc buried in his forehead. What's more, his room was locked from the inside at the time he was killed, and the prime suspect has a cast-iron alibi. Since Graves has blood on his hands (literally) from finding the body, and the finger of suspicion has already fallen on him, he'd better find the murderer - and fast. Only with MacGuffin's cynicism-spattered aid - oh, and a cardboard face on a stick - will Graves find the culprit.

Artwork?

Here's the work in progress on 'The Case Of The Deadly Disc' - the first 8 pages, fully scripted and laid out - click the thumbnails for hi-res versions:

   

   

   

   

Future Plans?

The finished graphic novel for this first story will be around 64-96 pages in size. Subsequent stories will also be shortish, snappy, and standalone, and will include Mafia-related developer intrigue, evil epilepsy-strobe kiddie game plots, and a host of weird and wonderful fictional game industry figures participating in intrigue, murder, and mayhem. Still, we'd better finish the debut story first, eh?