Private Beach to Conclude, 20 Years After It Started

Private Beach

What a world we live in! There’s no need to give up on a project you once loved, because it just might always come back.

David Hahn (whom you may know from his work on Bite Club, Fables, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, or Batman ’66 Meets the Man From UNCLE) originally broke into comics with the small press title Private Beach. It was first a three-issue miniseries called Fun and Perils in the Trudyverse (Antarctic Press, 1995), then seven issues came out from SLG Publishing (2001-2003).

I liked it. I liked his clean art style and the combination of slice-of-life characters with weird happenings. It felt very modern and relatable for young adults not sure what’s going on in the world around them but trying hard to keep it together and seem cool. You can see some of his art work in this interview about All Nighter, a 2011 Image Comics miniseries that was originally going to be a Minx title.

Anyway, Private Beach wound up Eisner Award-nominated for Best New Series in 2002, but it petered out and never satisfactorily concluded. The seven-issue run will now be reprinted by Dover Publications in May. Here’s a plot description from the previous run:

Trudy has what would appear to be a normal 25-year old’s life: She has a so-so job and a social life that consists mainly of hanging out in coffee shops with her best friend, Sharona Cupkey. However, despite her carefree and winsome countenance, Trudy is becoming slowly aware that her life runs with dark waters. Even as a child, she knew that there was a special place for her in the grand scheme of the universe, and she’s always dreaded finding out what it is…

According to this 2002 interview, Hahn felt that “the characters and situation [from Fun and Perils in the Trudyverse] don’t entirely mesh with the current incarnation of the series, although much of that can be explained by the passage of time”, which probably explains why it wasn’t included in this collection. He also says that the then-final issue #7 was intended to be “the first of a three-issue story arc that puts Trudy, Sharona, and Siobhan on a cross country road trip.”

But wait! There’s good news! This Dover reprint “adds a brand-new 30-page conclusion”! Finally, we’ll get to find out what happened and why, and I’ll get to find out if the struggles of these characters still make sense to me 15 years later.

Private Beach



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