It’s a god-eat-god world. Set on Olympic Hill in the Divine Capital (D.C.), BLACK TIES drops you into a heavenly political system that insists it’s functioning. Belief is currency. Power is absolute. Accountability is mythological.
Senator and fire god Eldur Vanstone is already having a bad eternity. His career is smoldering, his private life is ash, and the Senate of Gods would gladly sacrifice him to the next news cycle. Desperate, he joins the Divine Modernist Party—a slick operation built on ideological theater, theological rebranding, and the aggressive pursuit of power. At first, it’s just the usual shady backroom dealings. Then the Party unveils Citizen Karma, a sleek app designed to “empower belief.” Behind it hums the Karmic Rebirth Algorithm: a system that sways not just public opinion, but future elections. Why wait for voters when you can optimize reincarnation?
BLACK TIES is a caustic graphic novel blending magic realism, dark humor, and political satire sharp enough to draw blood. Consumerism is state religion, data is destiny, and democracy works perfectly… until someone updates it.
Coming late April/early May. Follow updates on the official website or BSKY.
Bjorn Klein is a writer of magic realism, fantasy, and satire—in other words, he prefers his reality with plausible deniability and builds worlds that refuse to behave. Weekday mornings, in those pauses between drafts, he teaches literature and music at an international school and insists to his students (against mounting evidence) that stories can, in fact, be kept in line. The resulting dissonance is ongoing. Bjorn lives, writes, and keeps a flexible relationship with good judgment in present-day Saigon.
Lucia Faccini is a Venezuelan illustrator from Maracaibo, now based in Vietnam. After several years working as an art teacher, she chose to fully dedicate herself to illustration, shifting from the classroom to the studio and embracing the creative freedom of freelance life. Her work lives at the intersection of character design and comics. She is the sole illustrator of BLACK TIES, shaping the visual identity of the entire graphic novel from raw layouts to final color.
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