7 Miles a Second Book

"Revolutionary.... a runaway, over-the-top circus... An excursion into areas few, if any, comics creators have tread." —Jim Steranko

"The rough and seedy style of Romberger's illustrations provides a perfect foil for Wojnarowicz's text. Seven Miles a Second veers between an almost unbearably gritty naturalism and the incendiary heat of surrealist hallucination." —The New Yorker

"A revelatory work of art... Romberger renders Wojnarowicz's moments of delirium and violent frustration as well as interludes of tenderness and passionate attachment." —Art in America

"A cult classic... both a celebration of the unlimited potential of the comic book form, and a perfect melding of inspiring, iconoclastic imaginations."—Jim Jarmusch

The cult classic graphic novel, the autobiographical tale of artist David Wojnarowicz's life as a hustler on the streets of NYC before he succumbed to AIDS, restored and reprinted by Fantagraphics.

7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992, and drawn by James Romberger with colors by Marguerite Van Cook. The graphic novel depicts Wojnarowicz's childhood of prostitution and drugs on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. Originally published as a comic book in 1996 by DC's Vertigo Comics, an imprint best-known for horror and fantasy material such as The Sandman, 7 Miles a Second was an instant critical success, but struggled to find an audience amongst the typical Vertigo readership. It has become a cult classic amongst fans of literary and art comics, just as Wojnarowicz's influence and reputation have widened in the larger art world. Romberger and Van Cook's visuals give stunning life to Wojnarowicz's words, blending the gritty naturalism of Lower East Side street life with a hallucinatory, psychedelic imagination that takes perfect advantage of the comics medium. This new edition will finally present the artwork as it was intended: oversized, and with Van Cook's elegant watercolors restored. It also includes several new pages created for this edition.