Washington White

In the District of Columbia, the President authorises covert testing of a mind-control disease. A greedy developer gentrifies the universe within the disease, and the black owner of a local tabloid threatens to expose the corruption—because his evil, white tycoon dad is the one behind it.

Winner of the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo's Cupcake Award, and Best of Show at Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival, Adam Griffiths's Washington White is a spy thriller set in a future D.C. This book also tells the true story of Adam Griffiths's grandmother, Peggy Griffiths, a lawyer for the U.S. Civil Service Commission's Appeals Review Board, best known for winning a landmark bias lawsuit against the federal government in 1977 for wrongfully being denied a promotion. In Washington White, bureaucrat Peggy Fables is denied promotion by the President who plans to install a supporter of the government's mind-control drug program. The representation of institutionalised racism experienced by his grandmother is, to Adam Griffiths, the most important part of this work. Griffiths is an artist and activist, with a conscience and an agenda, on the rise.

'Gentrification and institutional racism get the fun-house mirror treatment in this hyperkinetic conspiracy thriller debut by indie cartoonist Griffiths... Topsy-turvy political intrigues veer into uncertain terrain, but Griffiths's social critiques rise up vibrantly. It's a dizzying, maximalist romp.' - Publishers Weekly

'Adam Griffiths creates deeply knotty comics. To read them is to unwind a bundle of block letters, bumpy, billowy artwork and sweeping invectives on society's ills... Griffiths has fearlessly tackled the Big Stuff - sex, politics, gender, race - through circuitous and speculative science fiction. Needless to say, Griffiths's work is complicated and dense and us comics readers are better off for it.' - The Comics Journal

'Illustrated like a cross between the seminal '90s comic strip The Boondocks and the squashed-and-stretched surrealism of Rocko's Modern Life, the work blends the post-structuralist science fiction of German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder with a heavy dose of Japanese manga and anime.' - Washington City Paper

'Comic Riffs could readily see his eye-catching gouaches hanging in a gallery exhibiting macabre cartoonists, and his animation style might make even Beavis and Butt-Head's creator say: Kewwl!' - The Washington Post

'With an eye on the unbalanced and unjust characteristics of the world around him, illustrator and cartoonist Adam Griffiths uses the surreal and ridiculous to provoke societal examination. Skating the edges of contemporary art, illustration, outsider art, and underground comics, Griffiths imbues his work with various symbolisms and mutabilities of historical imperialism and class systems.' - East City Art