Two Dead

From the acclaimed DC Comics writer and the artist of the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning illustrated trilogy March comes a stunning crime noir graphic novel exploring the intertwining threads of crime, conspiracy, racism, and insanity in the post-World War II Deep South.

After World War II, tensions rise in a Southern city ruled by organized crime, touching countless residents as they struggle to make sense of the new world. A sudden act of violence sets off a series of bloody events between the police and mafia as they lash out against one another. As the violence worsens, desperation grows to stop it, by any means necessary.

Told in multiple perspectives—from a seemingly untouchable mafia don, to a gun-happy seasoned detective succumbing to the depths of his schizophrenia, to a newly minted police lieutenant haunted by his recent service in the war, and two African-American brothers, one mired in corruption and the other leading a local militia in an effort to see that justice is served—Two Dead is at once a white-knuckled and unputdownable thriller, a roman à clef inspired by true events, and a book about post-traumatic stress disorder and the underlying social traumas of how war and segregation affect their survivors on all fronts.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has gone on to write for and edit magazines. Breaking into comic books in 2009 with the acclaimed Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer graphic novel series, Jensen has gone on to write some of the biggest characters in comics, including The Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, and James Bond. Other series he has created include Cryptocracy (Dark Horse) and Valkyrie Beer Delivery (Stela). Jensen also writes and directs for film and TV. A native of Western Nebraska, he lives in Atlanta.

Nate Powell is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. His Eisner Award–winning work includes civil rights icon John Lewis’s historic March trilogy, Come Again, and viral comics essay About Face, as well as Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, and The Silence of Our Friends. Powell’s work has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, two Ignatz Awards, four YALSA Great Graphic Novels For Teens selections, the Walter Dean Myers Award, and is a two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. He has discussed his work at the United Nations, as well as on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, PBS, CNN, and Free Speech TV. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana. Visit him at SeeMyBrotherDance.org.