Spectrum - by Rick Quinn & Dave Chisholm (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Spectrum is a frenetic, genre bending, formally inventive story about the magic and power of music with words by Rick Quinn and visuals by Dave Chisholm (Chasin' the Bird, Miles Davis and The Search for the Sound).

Melody Parker is losing her mind. She's living on the streets of Seattle during the WTO protests of 1999. She is seeing things. Androids. Aliens. Pigs in high fashion. And a creature named Echo--one of the Sustained: elemental beings with the power to alter reality through music. She invites Melody to join her as she brings about the end of the world. As Melody tries to escape this strange woman, suppressed memories from across vast spans of time flood into her awareness, bringing her very identity into question.

Review Quotes

"...a mystical alternative history of American popular music and the social conflict around it--as well as a mind-bending tribute to the transcendent power of song over us all."--Calvin Reid "Publishers Weekly"

"Spectrum is a great comic and one that captures the sensations and chaos of art as an experience. Your confusion is as important an experience as your understanding, the two concepts dance on the page to create a captivating story of what it feels like love art, and to make art for the love it."--Steve Baxi "The Comics Beat"

"Chisholm's art is appropriately fantastic and storybook-like, overflowing with giddy colors and trippy transitions. The overall effect resembles an arcane concept album."-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Rick Quinn is a writer currently living in Raleigh, NC. Spectrum, co-created with Dave Chisholm, is his first published work. He is currently working on his first novel.

Dave Chisholm is a graphic novelist and musician currently living in Rochester, NY where he received his doctorate in jazz trumpet from the Eastman School of Music in 2013. His expertise in music as well as his formal inventiveness within the comics medium has resulted in a string of critically-acclaimed music-centric graphic novels including Miles Davis & the Search for the Sound (2023, Z2 Comics), Enter the Blue (2022, Z2 Comics), Chasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker in California (2020, Z2 Comics), and the groundbreaking graphic novel + original soundtrack Instrumental (2017, Z2 Comics). In his free time, Dave enjoys spending time with his family and his cats.