Hello Ira and my fellow Graphic Novelists!

I submit for your approval my pitch project for URCHIN, a graphic novel about mental illness, isolation, and an ancient sea monster!

A few quick notes:

- Coincidentally, my book takes place on an Island off the coast of New England (albeit a fictional one). I've been working on this story for some years now. In other words: I swear I didn't steal your setting, Ira :)

- It was tricky to avoid over-explaining! Ursula's point about "fatal loss" kept ringing in my ears. I worry that the naked plot and summary may seem run-of-the-mill, but that in the telling it will stand apart. Has this concern come up for anyone else?

- I originally conceived of URCHIN as a graphic novel for adults, but the more I work on it, the more it feels like it might fit in the YA category. Even the title has a youthful dimension. Thank you in advance for helping to consider the right market for this dark but wholesome tale.

- I'm very serious about this book and this process, so ANY feedback or criticism is deeply welcomed and appreciated.

That's it! Outline, summary, character pages, sample art, and a cover concept are all attached below.

Thank you so much, Ira, for the excellent class and this wonderful opportunity.

Enjoy, and good luck to all of you!



Story Summary

Young artist Holly Havelock wants to find her missing mom, but her dad Sam has given up. Now they’ve moved far from everything she knows, to the uncanny island where Sam grew up. 

Alongside ailing company, she’ll encounter deadly dreams woven by an ancient mind, the toxic fallout from her father’s illness, and the quaking of her own thoughts. 

Holly will either chart her darkness or become it.


Sample art and Character Pages




Outline

Holly and Sam Havelock, daughter and father, are distressed after the disappearance of their mother/wife Heidi Havelock. Nobody knows if there was foul play, or if she simply left them without a word.

The story begins on a passenger ship headed for Elam island, way out in the Atlantic. Sam has decided to move here despite Holly’s protests, and the unsolved disappearance. This is where Sam grew up, and Holly visited as a child. 

Aboard the ship, Holly meets a stoic ex-navy lighthouse keeper named Hilda. 

They arrive and connect with Boris (Bo), Holly’s Chess savant uncle and Sam’s brother. It’s revealed that he is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. He helps them get settled into their late aunt Dorothy’s creepy house.

Holly struggles to adjust, while Sam begins old patterns of substance abuse and repression. Sam bumps into his dear friend and old schoolmate Sandy, the sheriff of Elam island. Holly reconnects with her childhood summer friend Danny, a stylish and sarcastic local, over the discovery of a dead whale on the beach.

Holly, Danny, and Danny’s two friends Frank and Kwamé are attacked by a vicious, mysterious dog. Hilda saves them at the last moment by shooting the dog from atop the lighthouse.

When Holly gets home that night the tension and pain she and Sam have been suppressing boils over, and they have a blowout fight. Sam tells her to stay away from Hilda Ryu. He storms off and takes out a rowboat in the dark. He removes a locket from his coat and hurls it into the sea.

This is the first encounter with the Urchin, an ancient and unique sea creature. When it makes contact with humans or other animals, it causes terrifying  hallucinations, or madness (this is the reason for the corrupted dog.) It invades Sam’s mind.

When Holly wakes up the next morning, she can tell something is wrong with Sam. 

after a tense and strange interaction, Holly leaves and makes a call to check on her mother’s investigation. After an unavailing report from the investigator, Holly tries to board the next boat back to the mainland. At the boat house, she bumps into Hilda. 

The clerk denies Holly a ticket, but as she tries to call Sam she turns to find that Holly and Hilda are gone. 

They go back to Hilda’s lighthouse. While Hilda is making them tea, Holly discovers some partially hidden books with strange images and excerpts. Holly hides her discovery. They connect over being outsiders.

On the way home Holly is invaded by the Urchin. She fights the vision and escapes the encounter by using her creative imagination to manipulate the hallucinations. Her resistance keeps her from suffering a lingering connection with the creature. She tries to explain what happened to Sam but gives up when she realizes he won’t take her seriously.

Sam has become the Urchin's thrall, and his behavior becomes bizarre and worrying. He’s not sleeping. He exhibits severe mania that confuses Holly.

Holly uncovers evidence of Sam’s midnight boat trips and remnants of offerings to the Urchin like stolen items and even live animals. 

She finds Sam’s journal, full of disturbing passages. She narrowly avoids getting caught by Sam, and they have a tense interaction before he lets her go.

She goes to uncle Bo for help, and they talk over a game of chess. She almost tells him about her hallucination but hesitates. They argue about their shared family history. Holly gets a pawn to the end of the board, turning it into a queen. Bo check-mates her anyway. He agrees to help her.

Bo confronts Sam, and things escalate to a dramatic fight that leaves Bo injured. Sam runs away.

Holly finally turns to Hilda. 

when Holly shares her experience with the Urchin, Hilda reveals her knowledge of the island and the creature. 

Hilda and the late Dorothy (Holly’s great aunt whose home she’s living in) were close. Dorothy was related to the first human the Urchin ever invaded, giving her a slight resistance to its effects. Sam and Holly have inherited this resistance. In Sam’s case, it has been diluted by addiction and mental illness. This inheritance is also the reason the Urchin recognized Sam’s mind. 

Hilda helps Holly access her innate abilities. She explains the creature's different types of mental attacks. Some are violent and direct, while others are more subtle and corrosive. Her lesson is intercut with memories of the Urchin's attacks over the years.

No one has ever seen it.

It had been dormant for years until Holly and Sam came to the island. 

They call it The Urchin.

Danny bursts in and interrupts their training. She’s worried because their friend Frank has been acting strange. They find him at a bonfire on the beach. When they try to reason with him, they realize something is very wrong. He’s been infected by the Urchin.

Holly and Danny fight off their now-violent friend and escape.

Frank wanders up the road and into a busy bar. He surprises the locals, and before they understand what’s happening, he grabs a firearm from one of the local police officers, and shoots Sheriff Sandy.

Holly tracks Sam down and confronts him, armed with the news about Sandy’s shooting. She rescues him in a harrowing encounter with the Urchin by releasing the part of his mind that it imprinted on. His inner child, and his addict-self.  

Sam recovers in the hospital and tries to get Holly to stay. They have a conversation that sees their roles reversed, with Sam as the child and Holly as the nurturing adult. She leaves.

Sandy is alive! She comes to his room, as she’s also recovering here from her gunshot wound. 

They hash out old tensions, And she accuses Sam of always looking away, never towards, the things he needs to understand the most.

Meanwhile, Holly rallies Hilda, Bo, and Danny. Claiming no one will believe or help them, She presents a plan to kill the Urchin themselves.

They steal Sandy’s fishing boat from the marina, despite a VERY reluctant uncle Bo. (they need the equipment in order to capture the creature)

They take the boat out into the choppy water. In a bid to lure the creature, Danny deduces that intense feelings like sadness or fear are like a psychic lure.

Holly finally breaks down about her mother.

“It’s the things I don’t know, the things in the dark, that hurt the most.”

They draw In the Urchin, and it reveals its massive, octopus-like body covered in spines. It gets caught up in the ship's netting.

It’s too strong, and they are overwhelmed.

As things begin to turn bleak, Sam and Sandy return in a heroic and unexpected moment on the same small boat Sam used when first contacting the Urchin. 

They save Holly’s life, causing the Urchin to focus on them. Holly realizes in a flash that the creature’s psychic tethering might work both ways.

She dives into the water.

The moment she makes contact (the first human to ever do so willingly) she’s transported into a bizarre dreamscape with the Urchin.

Through intertwined visions of their pasts, Holly discovers that the creature has been alone for hundreds of years, lost, and desperate to connect to the only intelligent beings it can find.

But its attempts have been disastrous. Its darkness, when resisted, has only caused more suffering.

Their memories connect in interlocking panels, reflecting each other’s pain. 

Holly finally embraces it and promises that it will never be alone again. She subsumes a part of its mind, permanently joining with it. 

Back on the boat, only a moment has passed. The Urchin releases Sam and Sandy and delivers an unconscious Holly back up onto the boat. It peers into the eyes of the humans, then returns to the ocean.

On the beach below the lighthouse, Holly and Sam reconcile. She is different now, colder, but calm and peaceful. He throws his flask into the sea.

Sandy and Sam reconcile. Hilda and Sam reconnect, revealing a shared past.

Later, Holly visits Hilda, Bo, and Danny. She helps each reconcile with their shadow selves, using some new abilities she gained from joining with the Urchin.

She helps Bo with his illness, Danny with her anxiety, and Hilda with her traumatic past.

Everyone else’s lives go on, as Holly takes a boat out onto the sea to visit her new, old friend.

 •••

The epilogue takes place years later. An older Holly waits by the docks for a visitor.

An old woman arrives and says hello. Holly replies: “Hi mom.” They walk off side-by-side, towards the beach. 

 

THE END