History of a Family in Decline
A husband divorces his ailing wife and a teenage son–who believes himself to be a genius–drops out of college. Focuses on the father’s pseudo-spiritual quest and the son’s descent in drugs and grandiosity. Comic take on the modern family tragedy.
Madrid, Spain
Lethe Bashar is on study abroad. He moves into an apartment with a sixty-five year old Senora. Within two weeks, he undergoes an extreme form of culture shock. Between quitting classes, falling in love with his Senora’s maid, smoking hashish, and meeting a group of native Spaniards, an innocent study abroad program turns to living dangerously.
Las Vegas
After getting kicked out of a halfway house in San Jose, California, Lethe takes a Greyhound bus to Vegas. He finds a youth hostel on the West side called The Backpacker’s Inn. This Hotel California is refuge to a host of misfits and wanderlusts. Louie, a cherry-faced man, befriends Lethe and walks with him through the underbelly of the Las Vegas world.
Graphic Novel (Las Vegas in Comics)
I’m inspired by the symbols within traditional folk arts and those from my own surroundings in beautiful San Diego, California, plus the icons of Mexico and Asia.
Photography by Bachmont.
Edel Rodriguez is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine and was an art director at TIME magazine for over a decade.
I’m based in Spain, hence the bias in my work towards the Iberian peninsula.