Sin City inspired occult mystery

By Katherine Holt

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Sin City inspired occult mystery

Lincoln University graduate Nicholas Dishington releases his debut photo-graphic novel, 'Shadowraith'.

'Shadowraith' is an occult mystery story shot in the film noir style.

It follows a nameless detective who is drawn into a disturbing case when an anonymous letter arrives on her doorstep.

The book started as a third year university project which has snowballed into something bigger, 'Shadowraith' is published by The House of Murky Depths.

Their mission statement is to: To promote the "literary" value of comics.

To keep track of such a big project I covered all of my bedroom walls at uni in notes, sketches, rough page layouts and photographs. Nicholas Dishington

Following his graduation, Nicholas returned to the novel and set about re-writing and re-shooting many of the pages. These changes were large and included replacing two of the characters, which led to months of painstaking editing and tweaking before the novel was ready for publication.

Given the current popularity of graphic novels following the success of films like 'Sin City' and 'V for Vendetta', a photo-graphic novel was an unusual step forward.

Nicholas said: 'There are photo comics out there but they're pretty rare. I don't think they have enough appeal because it can look a bit tacky, so I tried to beat that by using old school film noir lighting techniques and not always being restricted by the usual boxes and speech bubbles.'

The novel is unique in that it is photographed rather than drawn, and uses distinctive hand-drawn fonts and dynamic page layouts to echo the mood of the story as it progresses.

For more information visit: Shadowraith website