Have you heard of Finder?Finder is aboriginal science fiction, set at street-level in a far-future world of domed cities and clans and high technology.
Finder is fantasy: magic and myth, and the hunger of memory, and the power of story. Its protagonist, Jaeger, the titular Finder, is a tribal detective and a Sin Eater, a ritual scapegoat; like Finder itself, Jaeger straddles the worlds of science and myth with astonishing grace.
Finder is a well-kept secret: despite tens of thousands of copies sold and a complement of awards that would make Will Eisner blush, it has flown largely under the popular radar.
According to Scott McCloud, who would know, Finder is “the best comic you’ve never read.”
Finder is one of the best comics I’ve ever read.
The first time I read Talisman—the fourth volume of Finder, although I didn’t know that at the time—I clung to it like a kid, for hours, half afraid that if I let it go, I’d find out I’d only dreamed it, so intensely did it resonate to me. Talisman is an ouroboros of sorts, a wondrous book about a wondrous book. Like the rest of Finder, it’s technically science fiction, but it’s also about totems, and hunger, and magic, and the incredible power of stories made solid; dedicated “to the kid with the book; everywhere.”
Finder is a storyteller’s story, fractally intricate, instantly accessible.
Finder contains, in no particular order: a tribe of lion women; a man with a world in his head; knock-down, drag-out fistfights; true love; a murder mystery; neighborhoods where it’s always night; a brilliantly dark send-up of Disney World; information-dealers; memory as currency; gods; monsters; and a guy with a sledgehammer.
Finder: Voice, an original graphic novel, will be out from Dark Horse in 2011, followed by the first volume of the Finder Library, which collects the first four story arcs of Finder—including Talisman.
See you there.