title: Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose
author:  Josh Neufeld 
description: Cartoonist Neufeld and writer Wilson bring together an assemblage of cartoonists and authors for a unique collaboration. Flash fiction (limited to 1,000 words for prose, four pages for comics) is produced based on a &quot;seed story&quot; and broken into groups of three under such intriguing thematic headings as &quot;Shell Shocked,&quot; &quot;Leviathan,&quot; and &quot;Mutable Architecture.&quot; The story interpretations can share a character, an incident, a trajectory, or just a particularly rich line or word, though the most potent juxtapositions riff on a particular feeling, as in the three &quot;Frozen&quot; stories, which delve with differing interpretations of isolation and loneliness, or offer resonating tonal surprises, as with the &quot;Venus &amp; Mars&quot; stories, which take on relationship woes. Though as a whole the comics tend to be more boldly experimental than the prose, the book itself is a fascinating example of how a transition from words to visual art and vice versa can deepen, subvert, or transform an idea in a revelatory way, and<i>Flashed</i>burns brightest when fired by this alchemy of discovery.<br />--<i>Jesse Karp, Booklist</i><br /><br />... One of the most fun reading experiences I&apos;ve had all year. ... A reader doesn&apos;t need to have experience in flash fiction or comics to be able to read and enjoy <i>Flashed</i>, but will likely finish the book with a new love for both. An intimate study in form and process, <i>Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose </i>lends fresh insights into the ways different forms and different styles of art and writing are able to inspire.<div>-- Katy Hass, <i>New Pages</i></div>
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  My son, Digby, began at exactly 3:02 in the morning on the first Friday in
  June. I don’t mean his conception or his birth.
  
  
  I mean the moment he began for me, which happened between those two larger
  events. It was a start so small I almost didn’t
  
  
  notice. I was very, very busy panicking about my job.
  
  
  I’d finished penciling and inking a limited series for DC Comics, the last
  contract standing between me and the prequel to
  
  
  my own graphic novel _, Violence in Violet._ Every word and every line of
  _Violence in Violet_ had been written and penciled and lettered and inked and
  colored by me. I was proud as hell of it, but I hadn’t continued
  
  
  it as a series. I couldn’t. _V in V_ ended in a full apocalypse. Literally
  nothing could happen next in Violence’s world, because there _was_ no next.
  Everything was over, and it stayed over until Dark Horse Comics came to me
  with the offer for a prequel. They wanted
  
  
  Violence’s origin story.
  
  
  Every superbei