The Book
Written by Erik Hendrix and Michael David Nelson
Art by Amanda Rachels
Colors by Gavin Michelli
Letters by Erik Hendrix
Edited by Amanda Hendrix
Arcana Comics
Release Date: December 2012
Cover Price: $14.95

The Book follows a group of student tourists in Italy who hunt down a DIY travel guide. When they find the book in a small café, one of the tourists discovers that it was stuffed with several pages of instructional text on an ancient ritual called Sanctus Letum, the Holy Death. This ritual allows someone to die, take a sneak-peek at what lies beyond, and come back to life. These ritual pages draw the tourists into the ritual spot of a death cult that believes that Lazarus, from the Bible, witnessed a few things before he was resurrected. Let the satanic rituals, demonic possessions, and gnarly death-making commence!

Creators Erik Hendrix and Michael David Nelson melded their own separate story ideas together to form The Book. Hendrix wanted to write a story about people killing themselves to see what’s in the afterlife. Nelson was toying with the idea of travelers hunting down collaborative, “off the grid” travel guides. The resulting story is a compelling twist on the old possession storyline. The Book is an inverse ghost story where the living want to explore the afterlife and, as a result, bring a little afterlife back with them. It’s a ritualistic twist on the movie Flatliners.