Go behind the scenes of our most ambitious radio programs and witness an intensely creative moment in a medium that’s changing the way we tell stories.

Every week, millions of devoted fans download or tune in to This American Life, The Moth, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, Radio Diaries, 99% Invisible, and other nonfiction narrative radio shows. The compelling stories they produce are almost cinematic in scope and approach—intricately weaving sound into robust and engaging storytelling. A lot goes into making the shows we love. Anchored by surprising characters and big questions, their stories are tightly structured, edited, and soundtracked, and they introduce us to authentic voices from every walk of life.

Radio and podcasts today are entrepreneurial and DIY; there’s a can-do, collaborative spirit that characterizes people working in this field, fearlessly breaking new artistic ground. And more than ever, given the excellence and explosive popularity of shows like Serial, it’s clear that the creative producers working in this medium hold the key to storytelling secrets that the rest of us must learn.

Out on the Wire, a documentary comic, literally illustrates those secrets, gleaned straight from those on the frontlines of radio’s revolution. With the help ofThis American Life’s Ira Glass, cartoonist Jessica Abel uncovers just how producers construct a story, spilling some juicy insider details along the way. Jad Abumrad ofRadioLab talks about chasing moments of awe with scientists, while Planet Money’s Robert Smith speaks candidly about his slightly embarrassing strategy for putting interviewees at ease. And Abel reveals how mad—really mad—Ira Glass becomes when he receives tough edits from his colleagues. Informative and inventive, Out on the Wire shows us the magic that makes these shows great and why we can’t stop listening to them.

Il giovane Dave Miller lavora di notte come commesso in un drugstore a Los Angeles e ha due caratteristiche: è un vampiro squattrinato ed è innamorato di Rosa, una ragazza dark che vuole diventare una vampira. Le cose però si complicano quando si mette in mezzo Wes, un vampiro bello, ricco e che non si fa tanti scrupoli a trasformare la ragazza in una non-morta.

From the Harvey and Lulu award–winning creator of Artbabe comes this riveting story of a young woman's misadventures in Mexico City. Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” She crashes with a former fling, Harry, who has been drinking his way through the capital in the great tradition of his heroes, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Harry is good—humored about Carla's reappearance on his doorstep—until he realizes that Carla, who spends her days soaking in the city, exploring Frida Kahlo's house, and learning Spanish, has no intention of leaving.

When Harry and Carla's relationship of mutual tolerance reaches its inevitable end, she rejects his world of Anglo expats for her own set of friends: pretty-boy Oscar, who sells pot and dreams of being a DJ, and charismatic Memo, a left-wing, pseudo–intellectual ladies' man. Determined to experience the real Mexico, Carla turns a blind eye to her new friends' inconsistencies. But then she catches the eye of a drug don, el Gordo, and from that moment on her life gets a lot more complicated, and she is forced to confront the irreparable consequences of her willful innocence.

Jessica Abel's evocative black–and–white drawings and creative mix of English and Spanish bring Mexico City's past and present to life, unfurling Carla's dark history against the legacies of Burroughs and Kahlo. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida–at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal–is a story about finding oneself by getting lost.


From the Hardcover edition.

Presents a collection of graphic short stories and selections of comic-book journalism.