Distant Ruptures: A Selection of Comics, 2000-2010

Goblins, wizards, superheroes, talking animals, and an assortment of fantastical shapeshifting characters populate this book of never-before-collected comics and illustrations, many of them drawn on incidental materials such as scrap paper and notepads.

Pulling from pulp, sci-fi, gag cartoons, fantasy, and thrillers, and populated by goblins, astronauts, magical thieves, and talking owls, CF’s comics break apart genres and forms, then reassemble them into one-of-a-kind stories that reveal an immense imagination and boundary-pushing talent.

Christopher Forgues (better known as CF) roared onto the indie comics scene in the early 2000s, producing some of the most exciting and influential work of the decade. His output was startlingly original and impressively prolific: his collaboration with Ben Jones, Paper Radio; his multi-part epic, Powr Mastrs; and the shorter comics and zines now collected for the first time in Distant Ruptures. These comics—created using scratchy pencil and brilliant color, smudged Xeroxes and scraps of notepaper—capture the extraordinary range of CF’s work.

Fellow cartoonist Sammy Harkham has gathered the best of them into this new collection, which also includes an introduction by Gabriel Winslow-Yost and a new interview with CF. Distant Ruptures offers readers their first chance to see the full scope of this remarkable era of CF’s comics.

CF is a cartoonist, artist, and musician. Born Christopher Forgues in eastern Massachusetts, he is best known for his graphic novel series Powr Mastrs. His art has appeared in Kramers Ergot, The Best American Comics, and The New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Sammy Harkham is a cartoonist and the editor of the influential comics anthology Kramers Ergot. His book Blood of the Virgin was selected by The New York Times as one of the best graphic novels of the year in 2024. He lives in Los Angeles.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost is a contributing editor at The New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.

Rob Goyanes is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Art in America, BOMB, e-flux journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Miami Herald. He lives in Los Angeles.