Cartoonist Ronald Wimberly, best known as author of the critically acclaimed 2012 graphic novel Prince of Cats, and editor of the comics and critical journal LAAB, returns with a new graphic work: GratNin (aka Gratuitous Ninja), a wildly imaginative graphic novel originally published as a vertical-scroll mobile web comic on Webtoon. In GratNin, Wimberly combines his love of ninja comics with the endless vertical scroll of mobile digital comics designed for a smart phone. The new print book is a 600-page accordian-folded non-linear graphic novel that transforms how we think about and read a comics work. GratNin will be released as deluxe box set by Beehive Books, which has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the book’s publication. Bookstore distribution will be announced at a later date.
GratNin is the story of the Namba family, the last ninja (or shinobi) family left in Brooklyn. Masters of the deadly KyokuGen Muron Ryu (KGMR) fighting style, the Namba family present themselves as pacifist hipsters but quietly use their skills to protect a neighborhood overrun with police and urban pirates. The family usually keeps their ninja skills on the down-low while running a Brooklyn community center, and a garden and food co-op from a 300 year-old house on the Gowanus Canal. But what good is being a ninja if you can’t use those skills to protect your hood; does that make you a “gratuitous ninja”? In this exclusive release of the book’s first chapter, we meet three new Namba clan recruits: Mo Brown, a weed dealer; 9ONE, an anarchist vandal; and Kibo Evars, the fastest blade and most deadly DoorDasher in all of Brooklyn. Wimberly says, “GratNin has been a playground for me to work in for about 20 years now and this incarnation with Beehive Books, with its unique presentation, really embodies the ideas of the comic.”
