Joyland
How Punks are Saving the World with DIY Ethics, Skills, and Values
Emily Schultz
Nate Powell
9781770410336
295 pages
Ecw Press
Overview
“Like a Reagan-era Ice Storm, Emily Schultz’s novel Joyland captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality in a tangle of pixelated icons via the video-game generation. Set in the summer of 1984, this book will have you thinking twice about the video-game generation and the power of pining and Pac-Man.” — Flare
Welcome to 1984 and the town of South Wakefield. Chris Lane is 14 and he’s sure that he can see the future, or at least guess what’s inside of Christie Brinkley’s mind. But he can’t foresee the closing of Joyland, the town’s only video arcade.
With the arcade’s passing comes a summer of teenage lust, violence, and a search for new entertainment. Never far away is Chris’s younger sister, Tammy, who plays spy to the events that will change the lives of her family and town forever. Joyland is a novel about the impossibility of knowing the future. Schultz bring the Cold War home in a novel set to the digital pulse of video games and the echoes of hair metal. Joyland is illustrated throughout by graphic novelist Nate Powell, whose work has been praised by Sin City creator Frank Miller as “observant, intimate cartooning [that] surgically cuts to the bone.”
BackLit bonus material includes an alternate ending and an author
interview.
Author Bio
Emily Schultz is a writer living in Toronto and New York. She is also the author of the novel Heaven Is Small, the short story collection Black Coffee Night, and the Trillium award–nominated collection of poems Songs for the Dancing Chicken (ECW Press, 2007). Nate Powell’s recent work includes Any Empire and Swallow Me Whole (Eisner Award winner for Best Graphic Novel, LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and Ignatz Award winner). He lives in Bloomington, IN.
