Enter a future of defiant vitality in GLEEM
Imbued with cyberpunk attitude and in the rebellious tradition of afrofuturism, GLEEM is drawn with a fierce momentum hurtling towards a future world. Carrasco’s distinct cinematic style layers detailed panels and spreads, creating a multiplicity of perspectives, at once dizzying and hypnotic. Vignettes unspool in proximity to our own social realities and expand into the outer layers of possibility. Whether in the club or a robot repair workshop, the characters in these three interconnected stories burst across frames until they practically step off the page.
A boy becomes bored at church with his grandmother until he tries a psychedelic drug. A group of friends are told that they need a rare battery if they want any chance of reviving their friend. Street style and cybernetics meet and burst into riotous dancing. Kindness and violence might not be as distant from each other as we think. GLEEM unsettles with a confidence that could make you believe in anything.

Freddy Carrasco's profile page

Freddy Carrasco is a Dominican-born artist from Toronto, Canada. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses comics, illustration, painting, sculpture, and music. He is currently living in Tokyo, working on his first solo exhibition and the follow up to the award-winning graphic novel GLEEM.

Dynamic cyberpunk in a Taiyō Matsumoto veil [where] Blackness exists in a dangerous place outside the security of citizenship—in the real world.

The Comics Beat

Many Western artists draw inspiration from manga, but far fewer successfully adapt the form to Western milieus. Frank Miller and Moebius are two; Carrasco is another.

The New York Times

GLEEM is a peek into the dazzling, euphoric world of one of the generation's most influential voices.

Chaz Bear

An Afro-futuristic world where the kids are alright but looking for more… Throughout GLEEM, narratives and images blur into one another, making you look again and again, longer and more intently each time.

Hyperallergic

Nobody's doing space and time the way Freddy Carrasco does.

Michael DeForge