Milk White Steed - Michael Kennedy

Milk White Steed - Michael Kennedy / 284-page paperback, 6.15 x 8.45 inches, published in 2025 by Drawn & Quarterly / ISBN 9781770467590

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The mournful, tragicomic tune of wanderlust undercut by the longing for a home seemingly lost

“Have I settled down yet?” The question rings eternal across all ten stories in this highly anticipated debut collection of comics fiction by New Yorker and New York Times contributor Michael D. Kennedy.

A series of individuals leave the West Indies and attempt to find their footing in the damp dinge of England’s counties. A child on his daily trike ride is stalked by a sinister, shape-shifting ligahoo. A blues singer’s wife hallucinates untoward revelations in the grips of high yellow fever when she inhales spores from psychedelic mushrooms growing unchecked in their apartment. A man dwells on his absent father, paints the man into a duppy myth, and bears the consequences of this fantastical undertaking.

Inspired by the folk tales and oral traditions of his Caribbean roots, Milk White Steed is a dreamlike venture into the messy truths of everyday West Indian lives: the abiding pursuit of the familiar and the vicious appraisal of their own otherness, all at once. Phantom desires, unchecked reveries, and surreal visions of the future flood the page in full-color. Kennedy’s decisive woodcut-inspired brush-strokes draw a striking portrait of the Black diaspora as it sees itself, always searching and yet forever seeing.

“I'm an enormous fan of Kennedy. I think he's a generational talent. This beautiful work feels like a lost nursery rhyme or an elegy for the lost.” ―Ben Passmore, Your Black Friend and BTTM FDRS

“Michael D. Kennedy has a totally original and confident voice on the page―so different from everyone else. The best pages of Milk White Steed hit like poster graphics.” ―Dash Shaw, Blurry and Discipline

“A rare beast―emotional, deceptively instant, unabashedly complex. Worlds collide and we are half defeated and amused. Vulnerable and wry. This is a virtuosic shape-shifting vision and an excellent comic.” ―Joe Kessler, The Gull Yettin