Cheon Seon-ran (Novelist, author of A Thousand Waves and Moll)

A sea breeze blows between the pages. The heart of one who rushes in an instant to a longed-for other world, and the heart of one who has suddenly lost a beloved—both become this sea breeze. The loneliness a person carries inside is as vast as the sea; folding this ocean layer upon layer is what made this book. Human loneliness is an ocean, not a lake. How fortunate that it is not a stagnant pool, not imprisoned. Precisely because it is an ocean, anyone can put on a life jacket and paddle across the loneliness—drifting, journeying, flowing slowly onward.

★ The first full-length graphic novel by Hwang Bae-ri, a rising star in independent publishing comics: This is her first full-length graphic novel, presenting a magical realist world with delicate artwork and sincere storytelling, concise and fluid.

★ Selected for multiple government support programs, with officially recognized quality: The book was selected for the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency’s Diversity Comics Production Support Program and the Korea Creative Content Agency’s Comics and Webtoons Publishing and Distribution Support Program. Its pre-publication crowdfunding reached over 300% of its goal. With delicate artwork and sincere storytelling, it presents a magical realist world, and has been recommended by novelist Cheon Seon-ran, Hankook Ilbo, The Hankyoreh, and others. Reader rating: 10.0.

Hwang Bae-ri, hailed as a rising star in independent publishing comics for works such as The Weight of a Photograph, Until I Can Taste Nothing, Another Christmas, and Ordinary Rights, presents her first full-length graphic novel, The Incredible Cinema. With delicate artwork and sincere storytelling, the book presents a magical realist world, concise and fluid. It was selected for the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency‘s Diversity Comics Production Support Program and the Korea Creative Content Agency’s Comics and Webtoons Publishing and Distribution Support Program; its pre-publication crowdfunding reached over 300% of its goal, highly anticipated by readers.

I am the misfit, the loner, the stranger. As time passes, the world seems to move on without me. In a reality where the road ahead is unclear, I am left behind alone, day after day. In this world, how am I supposed to keep living? What am I supposed to use to endure this loneliness? Have I lived wrong? Could there be another world prepared just for me?

Cho-yeop, the gatekeeper of the “Incredible Cinema,” who firmly believes in the existence of “another world” and has journeyed there countless times; Lee So, a viewer who wants to live in a world where everything remains forever unchanged; and Moo-seop, Cho-yeop‘s lover, who cannot understand why people choose to leave. Through the intertwined lives and fates of these three, the story draws a tender and beautiful answer to the question of loneliness.

Excerpts
P.36
How do you imagine the future?

P.58
The problem is that people cannot tolerate things not being where they ought to be. They always want to put everything back in its place, or simply pretend not to see.

P.60
“Why do you always throw yourself forward?”
“Everything else always makes people hesitate.”

P.80
People who dream believe this: on a night when you want to reveal a secret, if you sneeze, the part of your soul carrying the secret flies into the universe and becomes a star. The star falls into the sea and is reborn as a whale. In their faith, whales are sacred beings. They believe that misunderstandings between people and the ways they hurt each other all happen because the whales are angry…

Hwang Bae-ri

Comic artist and illustrator.

Graphic novels: The Incredible Cinema, The Weight of a Photograph, Until I Can Taste Nothing, Another Christmas
Short comics: Stardust, Ordinary Rights
Picture book: The Odd One (the first picture book she wrote and illustrated)

Packing, Backpack
Itchy Armpits
Please Keep the Secret
To Be Honest, Frankly Speaking
The Incredible Cinema
Moment of Bragging
Author’s Note