Daybreak

"A storytelling tour de force by turns creepy and poignant . . . One of the best books of the year." --Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly

You wake up in the rubble and see a ragged, desperate one-armed man greeting you. He takes you underground to a safe space, feeds you, offers you a place to sleep, and then announces that he'll take the first watch. It's not long before the peril of the jagged landscape has located you and your newfound protector and is scratching at the door.

What transpires is a moment-to-moment struggle for survival--The Road meets Dawn of the Dead. Daybreak is seen through the eyes of a silent observer as he follows his protector and runs from the shadows of the imminent zombie threat. Brian Ralph slowly builds the tension of the zombies on the periphery, letting the threat--rather than the actual carnage--be the driving force. The postapocalyptic backdrop features tangles of rocks, lumber, I-beams, and overturned cars that are characters in and of themselves. A New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller and YALSA Great Graphic Novel For Teens, Daybreak is an art-house take on the classic zombie genre.

Brian Ralph was a founding member of the influential and now-disbanded art collective Fort Thunder, acclaimed for their artistic melding of influences from comic books, video games, television, and fine art. With his award-winning debut work Cave In, Ralph emerged as a premier cartoonist with a visual language all his own. Ralph lives in Savannah, Georgia, where he is a professor at the Savannah College of Art & Design.