The Grot

"Anyone willing to get filthy can also get rich." In this dystopian swamp city, two brothers find that opportunity and exploitation lurk around every corner. But who's smarter: the hordes of people rushing to move in, or the equal horde desperate to leave?

Penn and Lipton Wise have set out to Falter City to make their fortune. It's the future, obviously, and things are pretty grim. The Australian landscape is traumatized. Plague is rampant. Machines only work as well as the poor sod pedaling them. Things are hotter and wetter than they used to be, giving the whole place the vibe of a sweaty armpit.

Lippy and Penn are hoping to set up shop in this grimy boom-town, but they've got to stay frosty, because it's teeming with hustlers, swindlers, and scoundrels. It's the sort of place where a lucky moron could make an outrageous fortune in an afternoon and lose it all before bedtime. The sort of place where two enterprising teenagers could really make something of themselves. Or so they say.

In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Blue, Pat Grant confirms his reputation as "the Australian Mark Twain" (Craig Thompson, author of Blankets and Habibi) with a page-turning graphic novel about economic inequality, desperation, and the gambler's addiction to hope even in the worst of times.

Pat Grant is a renowned cartoonist from Melbourne, Australia. His work has appeared in Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, and The Lifted Brow, as well as in magazines such as Artlink, Australia's Surfing Life, and Tracks -- but all of the best stuff comes out in his zine called Lumpen. He is the recipient of an Emerging Writers Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. His other comics include "The Last Sharehouse" and "Waiting for Something to Happen." His first graphic novel, Blue, was listed as one of the great graphic novels of 2012 by the US culture journal Salon.