Why I Killed Peter
By Alfred and Olivier Ka
NBM

NBM doesn’t offer much to go on. There’s the title of course—loaded but cryptic—suitable perhaps for a B movie thriller or a murder mystery. On the cover is a simple silhouette of a shadowy figure—Peter perhaps? The other side of the book offers only a quick pull quote from the text: “Peter is a liberal priest. He’s cool. He’s funny. He’s not a priest, he’s like a regular guy. It’s like I have a new uncle. A great one, who laughs, who sings, who tickles.” The back flap, meanwhile, offers a less than modest note from publisher NBM, that reads, in part, “Novels in the true sense [are] about exploring our lives, our feelings, our experiences…Here are the most intelligent comics the world has to offer.”

It’s a sad sign of the world’s current state, perhaps, that from these dissonant elements, we can glean some sense of the subject matter contained herein—the self-serious copy, a shadowy figure, a tickling priest. Pulling the pieces together, it becomes pretty clear why the company opted to forgo a straight-forward summary for the back of the book. After all, this is not sort of subject matter that moves comics in the direct market world. For that matter, Why I Killed Peter isn’t the kind of book that tends to draw a lot of sales from casual comic shop browsing. Rather, it’s the manner of book whose success traditionally hinges on industry buzz and critical acclaim. Fortunately for NBM, it’s likely to garner both.

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