Beloved comic book writer Grant Morrison is taking the leap into nongraphic fiction.
Morrison’s debut novel, Luda, will be published this summer by Penguin Random House imprint Del Rey, the writer announced on Instagram. “Curtain up! Light the lights! Announcing the debut of LUDA,” they wrote.
Morrison made their comic debut in 1978, when they were still a teenager, with contributions to the short-lived comics magazine Near Myths. They worked for Marvel UK and DC Comics in America in the 1980s, and have since worked on several comics including Batman, The Invisibles, and Action Comics.
Morrison has written a full-length book before, the nonfiction title Supergods, published in 2011 by Spiegel & Grau. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “For serious comics aficionados only, but those who dare enter will find the prose equivalent of a Morrison superhero tale: part perplexing, part weird, fully engrossing.”
Del Rey describes Morrison’s novel as a “phantasmagoric epic.” It follows Luci LaBang, a drag queen and musical actor who begins to mentor Luda, a young ingenue, but soon suspects her of using magic for evil purposes.
“What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the brightest star of them all,” Del Rey says.
Luda is slated for publication on Sept. 6.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
