DRYLAND Book One: Strato
Collects all the chapters of Dryland Book One.
Markosia Enterprises. December 2016. 152 pages.
ISBN: 978-1909276932
Dryland is a series of dramatised biographical graphic novels based on the untimely violent deaths of Con Chrisoulis’ ancestors in Interwar Greece.
Dryland Book One: Strato is set in pre-WWII rural Greece and focuses on the coming of age of Nidas, a young man who finds himself engulfed in the region’s illegal tobacco trade. Whilst smuggling tobacco leaves with his in-laws over the barren mountains of Dryland, a region spanning the coast of Western Acarnania, Greece, they are pursued by the authorities. And that’s when the trouble begins.
The book includes an eight page introduction in comics form by the creator, regarding his own family origins and the origin of the idea for Dryland.
The first chapter of Dryland Book One was a finalist at Myriad Editions’ First Fiction Graphic Novel competition in 2011, the judges including celebrated author Ian Rankin, Comica curator Paul Gravett, cartoonist Steve Bell, and graphic novelists Bryan Talbot and Hannah Berry.
The first chapter was initially self-published as Dryland Book One Chapter One and was sold exclusively online and at various UK comic cons. From 2014 to 2015, the remaining chapters of Dryland Book One were serialised weekly as a webcomic on SoComic.gr and in 2016 Markosia Enterprises published a trade paperback collection of all the chapters as Dryland Book One: Strato.
It is currently out of print.
Interview to Neos Kosmos newspaper, Melbourne, Australia (29 Jan 2016) regarding Dryland: