I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the BONDING by Matthew Erman & Emily Pearson Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
Author: Matthew Erman, Emily Pearson (Illustrations)
Release Date: January 31, 2023
Publisher: Vault Comics
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Pages: 208
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/BONDING
“Wear your heart on your
sleeve.” That’s the saying. But in BONDING,
people wear their anxiety on their chests – in the form of a parasite
that shows everyone just what you’re feeling on the inside …
WEAR YOUR LOVE ON YOUR CHEST
A man, a woman—and their parasites. Marcus has been alone since the loss of
his closest friend and has just recently entered into the dating scene, while
Laura has drifted in and out of relationships since high school. They meet,
they have a great first date, and Marcus almost dies—because the slug-like
parasite that everybody carries in this world nearly rejects him, its
host. BONDING is a funny, quirky, and honest look at love, in
a world where everyone wears their anxiety, not on their sleeves, but on their
chest like big ol' leeches.
Fans of Matthew Erman's work on Vault Comics' WITCHBLOOD and
Archaia's JIM HENSON'S THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE will
find lots to love in BONDING. Fans of Image Comics' ICE
CREAM MAN VOL. 1, DC Comics' COLLAPSER and even books
like THE HOST by Stephenie Meyer and THE PARASITOLOGY
TRILOGY by Mira Grant will enjoy this foray into all the stressors of
dating...where a parasite is the least of your worries (unless it kills you,
that is.)
Review:
“Erman and Pearson skewer genre norms in this sweet and casually unsettling comics romance-dramedy…”- Publishers Weekly
What was your “real-life” inspiration for writing /drawing BONDING?
MATTHEW:
Oh man, my inspiration for this book feels almost impossible to pin down. I think generally, all my work stems from a general love of surrealism and appreciation of genre tropes. You know BONDING has a lot happening and subverts a ton, in terms of what uhh— ‘categories/genres’ it can fall under if you’re out there classifying stuff. It’s a sci-fi, it’s a love story, it’s a generational family story about trauma, it’s a body-horror story, it’s a road trip and a highschool romance — and I think it manages to be all of these things while being its own story, harder to nail down and classify.
As far as how the idea and the story came to me, it was around 2017, maybe the summer or fall and I was driving home from my day job and I just envisioned this world and it felt so right and true to the moment of who I was and what I wanted to write, that as soon as I got home I wrote the first 24 pages or so — and incredibly, after all the edits and revisions and iterations of this story those first 24 pages never changed, the first date between Marcus and Laura — maybe they should have haha, but they didn’t and that central feeling drove the rest of the book. I wrote those pages before I even pitched it to VAULT, which is just so crazy. As I’ve got so many more books under my belt since this went into contract and I wrote it, looking back it feels like a time capsule to a moment in my life where I was still unsure whether this was something I was going to do — my first book LONG LOST was still coming out and the future seemed so uncertain. I was working through a lot of mental health stuff, and coming to terms with aspects of my life that I hadn’t yet, and a lot of that sentiment is there in the book.
All this said, it ended up meaning more to the future than it meant in the present when I was writing it, as we were all staring down COVID-19 and a total breakdown of interpersonal relationships to a degree. The slugs in the book take on a crazy amount of symbolism because of that, so this book kind of became bigger and more expansive than I ever intended.
BONDING is a weird, humorous, sci-fi love story, addressing timely topics such as mental health, self-perception, anxiety, and an array of other topics. Can you talk about how these are represented in the book – and why they were important?
MATTHEW:
All those topics are very important and yeah, they are all themes and ideas present in BONDING. The book I don’t think is necessarily defined by those topics or tries to make grand sweeping statements about how people or the world should deal with things or how they should go about their own mental health. I tried to look at the world and the story through the eyes of the characters and not to make judgements about who they were/are and how they deal with those topics. Ira is maybe the easiest to point at and say, “he’s not dealing with these things in a healthy way” but the book doesn’t say that and lets the reader come to their own ideas and interpretations. My intent as a writer is to always tell the best, most unique and engaging story I can with whatever I’ve got in my toolkit for that particular story and those themes and ideas were intrinsic in writing this story and having it feel that it came from an authentic place, which it did.
Matthew Erman is a comics writer from Columbus, Ohio. Alongside Lisa Sterle, he
co-created the critically acclaimed comic horror series, Long Lost, which was optioned for Film/TV by Producer Jenny Klein (The
Witcher, Daisy Jones and The Six). Erman has since worked on the comic book
series Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and
graphic novel Power Rangers: Sins of the Future with BOOM! Studios,
series Care Bears: Unlock the Magic with IDW, the upcoming
science fiction/ horror / humorous romance original graphic novel BONDING,
with artist and co-creator Emily Pearson for Vault Comics, and the smash
supernatural action adventure comics series (with artist/co-creator Lisa
Sterle) from Vault Comics, WITCHBLOOD. His short work
can be found in anthologies such as Corpus (2018), Dead Beats (2019)
and Everything is Going Wrong (2019).
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon
Emily Pearson is a freelance comic book artist from Davis, California.
She has previously worked for Black Mask Studios; “The Wilds”(2018) and “Snap Flash Hustle”(2018-19), Oni Press’s “The Vain”(2020),
and the upcoming “Bonding” coming to Vault Comics in 2022.
In addition
to comics series, she drew a short story for the Ringo Award Winning “Mine!” an
anthology for Planned Parenthood, Vault Comic’s “Cult Classic Zero
Short”, “CORPUS” curated by Nadia Shammas, and “Everything
is Going Wrong: Comics on Punk & Mental Illness”.
She has illustrated various covers for comic books including: “Stranger
Things: SIX” from Dark Horse Comics, “Calexit: Emmie X”, “The
Devil Within”, “Sweet/Vicious”, “The Wilds”, “Snap
Flash Hustle” from Black Mask Studios, “Going to the Chapel” from
Action Lab, “Atlantis Wasn’t Built For Tourists” from Scout
Comics and many more.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
(2) winners
will receive a finished copy of BONDING - US Only.
Ends February 18th, midnight EST.
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
1/16/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post | |
|
1/17/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post | |
|
1/18/2023 |
Excerpt | |
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1/19/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post | |
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1/20/2023 |
Excerpt | |
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1/21/2023 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
Week Two:
|
1/22/2023 |
Nagma | TakeALookAtMyBookshelf |
IG Review |
|
1/23/2023 |
IG Review | |
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1/24/2023 |
IG Review | |
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1/25/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post | |
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1/26/2023 |
IG Review | |
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1/27/2023 |
Review/IG Post | |
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1/28/2023 |
Review |
Week Three:
|
1/29/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post | |
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1/30/2023 |
IG Review/TikTok Post | |
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1/31/2023 |
IG Post | |
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2/1/2023 |
IG Post | |
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2/2/2023 |
Review/IG Post | |
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2/3/2023 |
IG Review/LFL Drop Pic | |
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2/4/2023 |
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers |
Review/IG Post |
Week Four:
|
2/5/2023 |
Review/IG Post | |
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2/6/2023 |
Review/IG Post | |
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2/7/2023 |
@just_another_mother_with_books |
IG Review |
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2/8/2023 |
Review/IG Post | |
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2/9/2023 |
IG post | |
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2/10/2023 |
Review | |
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2/11/2023 |
Review/IG Post |
Week Five:
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2/12/2023 |
IG Post | |
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2/13/2023 |
IG Review | |
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2/14/2023 |
IG Review |
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