Pizzeria Kamikaze Coming Back to Print

Pizzeria Kamikaze

Pizzeria Kamikaze was a fascinating concept for a graphic novel, first issued back in 2006 by Alternative Comics. It was illustrated by Asaf Hanuka from a story by Etgar Keret. (The same story inspired a movie the same year, Wristcutters: A Love Story.)

BOOM! Studios has announced that their Archaia imprint will be reissuing Pizzeria Kamikaze as a full-color hardcover with a new cover by the Eisner Award-winning Hanuka. (The previous release was black-and-white with silver highlights, which I liked to indicate the afterlife setting, so I’m curious to see the new color approach.)

Pizzeria Kamikaze

It was about a boring afterlife populated by suicides, where a guy stuck in a dead-end job takes a road trip to try and find the woman he was obsessed with back in life. From the press release:

“What was both surprising and beautiful, from my perspective, was that the original black-and-white Pizzeria Kamikaze and the film were both amazing adaptations, and each had a completely different tone and sensibility but, at the same time, both of them were incredibly moving and loyal to the text,” says Keret, who wrote [the original story] “Kneller’s Happy Campers” after an ex-girlfriend tragically passed away. “As a writer, you can meet your reader but will never really know what they’ve experienced when they’ve read your text. These two adaptations were a rare chance for me to take a peek into the mind of two brilliant and talented artists, and I feel very lucky and very grateful for that.”

“When I first worked on Pizzeria Kamikaze, I was 25 and felt the good times were over and now I’m just going to become old and lonely,” says Hanuka. “The story starts at this point, but then goes somewhere magical and full of hope. Working on the book literally made me better. I consider myself lucky to get a second chance to do this book a bit differently. The colors came out beyond anything I could imagine, and with a new cover I feel like this story is finally getting a chance to reach new readers.”

That’s a fascinating insight into how an artist interacts with his work. Pizzeria Kamikaze will be available in comic shops in February 2018 and bookstores in early March.

Update: It can now be ordered from your local comic shop with Diamond code OCT17 1243. The cover price is $24.99 and it is due February 28.



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