Dark Souls Meet Courtly Romance in Margot Ferrick's Comics
Half Gold / Half Dung, a 72-page collection from Breakdown Press, fills its pages with knights in armor recognizable from the FromSoftware universe
Berlin bookshop All The Problems In This World has put Margot Ferrick's Half Gold / Half Dung on its shelves as a U.K. import, posting on Oct. 8. The book is a 72-page paperback collection of drawings and comics from London publisher Breakdown Press, which describes it as "melding the worlds of video games, courtly romance and classic illustration."
The preview pages on Breakdown's site show knights and pilgrims drawn in ink, pencil and loose washes of color. Several wear armor from FromSoftware's Dark Souls: a knight in a sunburst tabard that matches Solaire of Astora, and a row of soldiers in the onion-shaped helmets of the Catarina knights. Others are shown in close embrace, in poses closer to medieval romance painting than to game art.
Ferrick's Instagram bio points readers to a separate account for Dark Souls drawings, and the game's knights recur across the preview pages. Breakdown has also published Ferrick's comic Star of Swan, about a lonely swan traveling cross-country to a gathering of other birds, which the publisher says explores "internet friendships, desire and the space between want and need."
Half Gold / Half Dung sells for £14.99 from Breakdown Press. The book was printed in Turkey by 12.Matbaa.
For more reading, see The boss fight is offscreen in Leonardo Devito's Dark Souls, Visions of hell: Dark Souls's cultural heritage and Half Gold / Half Dung at Breakdown Press.
Pages from Half Gold / Half Dung. Images: Margot Ferrick, Breakdown Press
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