Taking Eden
Issues #1–4
Created by Jason Beckwith & Malcolm Johnson
Written by Jason Beckwith
Art by Nino Harn Cajayon
Colors by Gonzalo Duarte
Never Static Pictures
Release Date: December, 2012
Cover Price: $4.99

Jason Beckwith takes us into the murky depths of a sordid, occult-tinged club scene in his new series Taking Eden. The comic’s genesis was a writing exercise between Beckwith and Malcolm Johnson while working at a design agency. Beckwith ran forward with their idea, refining the story over the past 10 years. The result is a wonderfully dark indie comic that mixes novel-like, scene-setting, third-person narration with sequential art.

Marnie is a small-town, down-home girl brimming with naiveté. Taking Eden begins a year after the actual story with Marnie offering a vague hope that she was a puppet rather than acting on her own volition. The story then jumps back to when she made her move to the big city to follow her dreams of becoming an actor. Her cousin, Gretchen, shows Marnie a good time by letting her tag along while she DJs in the club scene. Marnie’s innocence is the key ingredient that an unscrupulous sorcerer, named Sky, needs to produce the hottest drug on the scene: Eden. Sky is a hot-shot club owner who’s creating his own empire based on Eden, which only he knows how to make. His club gives him access to young, innocent women to juice his new drug.