{"id":964,"date":"2012-03-25T22:47:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T22:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/?page_id=964"},"modified":"2023-02-23T16:34:41","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T16:34:41","slug":"sean-ford","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?page_id=964","title":{"rendered":"Sean Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 760px; padding-left: 100px; padding-right: 100px;\"><a href=\"#Bio\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"38\" height=\"105\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1179\" title=\"Bio\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SFBio.gif\"><\/a><a href=\"#Reviews\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"83\" height=\"105\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1180\" title=\"Reviews\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SFReviews.gif\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/collections\/vendors?q=Sean%20Ford&amp;contributorID=20964\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"71\" height=\"105\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1182\" style=\"border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-width: 0px;\" title=\"Store\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SFStore.gif\"><\/a><a href=\"mailto:seanpford@gmail.com\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1181\" title=\"Email\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SFContact.gif\"><\/a><a name=\"Bio\"><\/a><br \/>\n<span class=\"txtHeading\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1177\" title=\"JB\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Sean.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"175\"><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"txtHeading\">BIO<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 760px; padding-left: 100px; padding-right: 100px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 760px; padding-left: 100px; padding-right: 100px;\">\n<span class=\"txtParhead\">Sean Ford<\/span> is the creator of Only Skin and Shadow Hills, and a founding editor of the Best American Comics notable comic anthology, Sundays. He graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2008. His comics and illustrations have appeared in the Alternative Comics anthology series, Alternative Comics are Dead, online at Slate and Narratively, and in Verso Books titles. His design work includes books by authors Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, Dan Simmons, Joshua Ferris, Anita Shreve and others. He lives and works in Peekskill, New York.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtHeading\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a name=\"Reviews\"><\/a><br \/>\n<span class=\"txtHeading\">IN PRAISE OF SEAN FORD<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtParhead\">Sean Ford<\/span> creates a world that\u2019s both eerie and warmly mundane. Not an easy feat.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Alison Bechdel, author of <em>Fun Home<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is the debut graphic novel from Sean Ford, published by the ever-exciting Secret Acres. It follows the lives of two orphans in what could easily be a post-apocalyptic world, but is actually modern rural America. The same desperation and unease that marks Cormac McCarthy\u2019s <em>The Road<\/em> is also present here, with some unexpected and surreal interjections of the supernatural that make for an unpredictable and thoroughly engaging narrative. It\u2019s all rendered in a style that recalls Dylan Horrocks and Craig Thompson, establishing Ford as a strong contender for the best new artist to emerge this year.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Gavin Lees, <em>Bleeding Cool<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sean Ford\u2019s <em>Only Skin<\/em> is just the sort of comic book I like reading. Not only a tale of quirky surreal horror, intrigue, adventure and exquisite humor, this book has a great amount of heart.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Farel Dalrymple, of <em>Omega the Unknown<\/em> and <em>Pop Gun War<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sean Ford is a talent to watch.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; James Sturm<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a style=\"display:none;\" class=\"collapse-text\" id=\"te933353533\" href=\"javascript:expand('#te933353533')\"><span class=\"txtHeading\">MORE PRAISE FOR SEAN FORD<\/span><\/a>\n<div class=\"te_div\" id=\"te933353533\"><script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text\/javascript\">expander_hide('#te933353533');<\/script><\/p>\n<p>In a small Western town tucked between a mountain range and a pristine forest, citizens are disappearing. First it was the owner of the local gas station. Then two buddies who went out into the woods looking for him. When teenage Cassie and her brother, Clay, return to town in search of their estranged father, nothing seems right: The sheriff\u2019s more worried about her land deal than the mystery, Cassie\u2019s only co-worker is a narcoleptic, and there\u2019s a ghost in Clay\u2019s bedroom. As the town reckons with its future, Cassie grapples with her past and her father\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n<p>Sean Ford\u2019s <em>Only Skin<\/em> is a spooky graphic novel about small-town life and death. Ford\u2019s deadpan pen-and-ink linework gives the book its sense of quiet menace; reading it, you have no idea what\u2019s coming next, but you know it won\u2019t be good news for these characters. Who is abducting townspeople? Why are deer turning up maimed? Why did Cassie and her brother leave, and what will happen to them now that they\u2019ve come back?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Dan Kois, Slate<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Secret Acres doesn\u2019t like to do anything easy, and Sean Ford\u2019s <em>Only Skin<\/em> is a perfect fit for the publisher. The tale features two siblings attempting to deal with their father\u2019s death and a series of mysterious attacks and disappearances in a small town surrounded by wilderness. The only thing about this narrative that\u2019s black and white is the art. Everything else focuses on the oddness, liminality and flaws in jumping to conclusions. Rather than favoring vigilante action, Only Skin wants you to hold back and think before rushing off into danger, especially as there might not be an answer to your question. What\u2019s more frightening: the unknown in the woods or the unknown in your neighbors? Ford doesn\u2019t come down on one side or the other, but beautifully teases out the horror in his premise. The presence of a ghost who resembles the iconic sheet with eyes and a mouth is a particularly interesting choice, seemingly harmless and all the more frightening for it. The ending leaves one unsettled in a way that\u2019s rare in any medium and calls to mind Werner Herzog\u2019s gift for evoking the uncanny in a truly Freudian sense.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Hillary Brown, <em>Paste Magazine<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A young woman and a boy get off a bus at a gas station and garage in the desert. It was their father\u2019s business, he\u2019s disappeared and presumed dead, and they\u2019re taking it over, not all that long since their mother died, unreconciled with her formerly cheating husband, whose inamorata moved on to a younger man. Their dad isn\u2019t the only one who goes missing in the course of this graphic novel resuscitation of the 1950s B-movie horror thriller that includes spooky elements (to wit, ghosts) but ultimately reaches a \u201cnatural,\u201d if far-fetched, resolution. Exposing details of the action or the resolution would be churlish, for many may think them far less interesting than Ford actually makes them and skip this very well-executed graphic novel. Ford draws bigger kids and adults the way Charles Schulz might have, and his backdrops are as spare as the sets of those \u201950s B-movies. The book\u2019s in black-and-white (fortunately), and the big pages of this volume allow many a frame to have cinematic impact.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Ray Olson, <em>Booklist<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a well-crafted and spooky drama with all the best human and supernatural elements you could hope for in a gripping mystery story. The ghost character is at once hilarious and chilling and certainly my favorite from the book. The plot tosses and turns, evading understanding, only to finish with an even more terrifying conclusion than what can be imagined.<\/p>\n<p><em>Only Skin<\/em> is a very plot-driven book with its characters and environment serving purposeful roles to drive that plot forward. Its characters are interesting, not thin, despite this, but it\u2019s easy to be sad at the end for lack of a few more substantial B-plots. You can see how Ford wrote in the potential to spiral this story into a long-running, fully-engaging series (it was originally serialized in 7 parts) but maybe he felt pressure over the long creation process to take few detours and concentrate on distilling and prioritizing his plan into a trim story with a good flow.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s great, seriously. All things being equal, I just wish for more of it since the world is so interesting.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Sarah Morean, <em>IndieReader<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is the kind of comic book that will just give you the creeps. In a good way, of course. But the creeps, nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p><em>Only Skin<\/em> kicks off when Cassie and Clay return to their hometown to look into the mysterious disappearance of their father. He owned a gas station at the edge of what looks to be a pretty depressed town that\u2019s getting more depressed by the minute. That\u2019s because Cassie\u2019s dad isn\u2019t the only citizen who\u2019s gone missing. One by one, more members of this small community are vanishing, and the police aren\u2019t helping by telling the worried citizens that everything\u2019s going to be okay as long as \u201cno one goes into the woods!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, where does everyone end up going? The woods, of course.<\/p>\n<p>Add to the creepiness of the disappearances a practical joke-loving ghost (the white bedsheet with two eyeholes kind) who follows Clay around and torments him, and a well meaning gas station attendant who inexplicably falls asleep in midsentence, and you\u2019ve got all the ingredients for a five star \u201cwhat the heck\u201d-fest.<\/p>\n<p>Ford has an amazing ability to capture the emptiness of the American small town and his tone is pitch perfect. If the Coen Brothers made comic books, this would be one of them.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Josh Perilo, <em>the Mindhut<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The warnings from locals are immediate\u2014the vast wooded area behind Cassie\u2019s family\u2019s gas station should go unexplored. \u201cWhat? I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s a great idea,\u201d says Chris, a mechanic who worked alongside Cassie\u2019s father before he went missing. The forest in Sean Ford\u2019s strange and beautiful book is an intimidating place that locks in most of Only Skin\u2018s murkiness. The book\u2019s dreams and intangibility mystifies, too, in the townspeople\u2019s odd nightmares or generally inexplicable experiences. For one, Chris\u2019s sense of the present is hazy. He\u2019s barely lucid at points, a narcoleptic, dozing off mid-conversation or napping in the garage at particularly unstable junctures of the story. The mild-mannered Paul dreams about his father\u2019s brain disorder, a scenario that takes place in a hospital before Sean Ford plants the bed and IV bags in a grim forest setting, where Paul\u2019s dad is drawn walking off into the trees. And Cassie\u2019s brother Clay begins a regular dialogue with a ghost, the iconic Halloween-clipped-sheet-n\u2019-eyeholes apparition you\u2019ve always known but have never really been comfortable with. Their conversations begin when Clay appears to be asleep, and then suddenly outside, in the infinite Spoke State Forest.<\/p>\n<p>Only Skin\u2018s oversized pages (8.25\u201d x 11\u201d) offer a roomy canvas for Ford\u2019s sketch pens. Blacked-out night walks in town are barely illuminated by streetlamps and sunlit scenes have the spacious panels they call for. When Cassie gets back into the old neighborhood, she finds Chris talking to a cop and cleaning up a ghastly, bloody scene that transpired in the station\u2019s lot. By the time she starts asking questions, a number of people have disappeared into the woods. From that point, even in its familiar framing and infrequent spots of dark humor, moments of certainty or comfort are scarce in <em>Only Skin<\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of territory out there\u2026\u201d says Chris. Sleepy or not, he means it.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Dominic Umile, <em>PopMatters<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>While the characters may be simply rendered, there is a clear drive on Ford\u2019s part to suture us into a very real and unique locale through his lush backgrounds. With sweeping brushstrokes he carves out the expansive, mountainous landscape and seems to delight in full-page wordless spreads where the silence and desolate beauty of the town is practically palpable.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, if there\u2019s one constant in the book, it\u2019s that unsettling feeling of loneliness and separation that permeates every line and every word. In Only Skin, Ford holds a mirror to our own anxieties and presents a world where the most terrifying thing is neither ghosts nor murderers, but our own insecurity.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Gavin Lees, <em>Graphic Eye<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ford\u2019s art in <em>Only Skin<\/em> is handsome; careful placed lines that shift from thin to thick, and provide a clean, uncluttered look to each person\u2019s face and their surroundings. The two parts of the art for <em>Only Skin<\/em> that particularly stuck out for me, though, were the ghost and the landscape of the town and its surroundings. The ghost at a glance feels laughable, akin to the ghost outfits that the Peanuts characters wore in It\u2019s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! or the enemies in Pac-Man. It\u2019s a disarming look, one that is slightly humorous and danger-deflating. As <em>Only Skin<\/em> progresses, though, the ghost becomes increasingly menacing while never changing its appearance. It\u2019s an impressive feat on Ford\u2019s part; something that looks so cute ends up being disturbing. The look of the small town is also in many ways just as important to <em>Only Skin<\/em> as its characters; Ford brings across that overall sense of isolation that is so critical to the story being told here. You truly get the sense that there\u2019s nothing for miles, that the forest around the town is both a never-ending expanse as well as a dangerous barrier. By the time we get to see what lies beyond the forest thanks to Rachel\u2019s story, we\u2019ve gotten such a feel for the forest stretching on forever that its reveal is slightly surprising and also exuding an instant &#8220;this is a bad place&#8221; feel. It\u2019s a nice trick, and helps make <em>Only Skin<\/em> as strong as it is.<\/p>\n<p>I was pleasantly surprised and enthralled by <em>Only Skin<\/em>; I hadn\u2019t read its mini-comic serialization up until now, which let me feel that much more surprised and startled by its series of events. Secret Acres has done a great job of finding and bringing into the spotlight various small press creators, and Ford and Only Skin are no exception. With an oversized presentation and a smooth cover stock, it\u2019s a beautiful book to have on your shelf. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Greg McElhatton, <em>Read About Comics<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Only Skin: New Tales of the Slow Apocalypse<\/em> gathers the previously serialized black-and-white comic epic by Sean Ford into a single graphic novel &#8211; with the addition of several dozen new pages, and an improved ending! A dark portrayal of rural America, seen from the perspective of orphaned siblings, <em>Only Skin<\/em> details the problems of people struggling to survive amid poverty and local corruption. Something is causing townspeople to disappear into the woods without a trace. But which is more evil &#8211; the lurking horror of ghosts, the hypocrisy of seemingly ordinary people who sell each other out for personal gain, or the murderous impulses of human hearts? Grim and suspenseful, <em>Only Skin<\/em> is as memorable as it is unsettling, and highly recommended for connoisseurs of quality independent graphic novels.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; <em>Midwest Book Review<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The book rests on the way various character arcs intertwine, with some characters acting as straight men and others as quirk magnets. There\u2019s something killing people in a forest near a truck stop town, and a woman came back to try to find her missing father\u2026 In a comic where atmosphere meets absurdity, Ford cranked up both to a thrilling degree in this issue.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Rob Clough, <em>The Comics Journal<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Only Skin<\/em> is a wonderfully drawn book that show\u2019s some great potential. He has 3 issues out and all have blown me away.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; <em>Inkstuds<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It is a town that could well be near Roswell, it could be a town that is linked in many ways to <em>Twin Peaks<\/em>. It could have the characters of <em>Baghdad Caf\u00e9<\/em> lurking in the shadows; it could become an <em>X- Files<\/em> case. It could be so many things but I have a feeling it will turn out to be something dangerous and new and very exciting.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Comics Bulletin<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Only Skin<\/em> immediately grabbed my attention, and the humor and playfulness in Sean Ford\u2019s narrative kept me engaged.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Mark Siegel, First Second Books<\/span><\/p>\n<p>While looking more like an Anders Nilsen by way of Pac-Man creation than anything the Brothers Hernandez ever created, the story of a small town and its disappearing residents is one that has a spiritual kinship (at least) to the trials and tribulations of the residents of Palomar&#8211;complete with a floating ghost where a little black monkey would be. As with any story that&#8217;s relatively (we imagine) a ways from being finished, most of what comes out of reading this is a desire to know more than one of really knowing what&#8217;s going on&#8211;what is happening to the disappeared, what the little ghost\u2019s motive is, what&#8217;s hiding in the forest&#8211;you know, the tell-me-the-end-of-the-movie questions. Luckily, Ford has figured out to develop and draw characters enough so that they don&#8217;t all behave as interchangeable and indistinct men and women&#8211;it&#8217;s a small cast, but there&#8217;s plenty of cartoonists with no real ability to differentiate beyond anything other than gender. Ford doesn&#8217;t have that problem. Each and every voice here is distinct.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; The Factual Opinion<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sean deserves all the credit in the world for coming up with this idea and sticking with it. It\u2019s way too easy to see things logically and financially and give up on comics when you\u2019re halfway through a story; it happens all the time. But that\u2019s not how genuine artistic achievements get done, and I think Sean is well on his way to pulling that off.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"txtReview\">&#8211; Optical Sloth<\/span><\/div><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BIO Sean Ford is the creator of Only Skin and Shadow Hills, and a founding editor of the Best American Comics notable comic anthology, Sundays. He graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2008. His comics and illustrations have appeared in the Alternative Comics anthology series, Alternative Comics are Dead, online at Slate and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":962,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/964\/revisions\/6022"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}