THE BONES OF THIS PLACE

“…something happened and my body started becoming something new. It did this without my permission, without caring what I needed or who I believed myself to be.”
– Marie Enger

Marie (“anger with an E”) Enger’s sharp-as-a-razor lines, intense silhouettes and spiky figures represent the best of an illustrator’s unique power – the ability to reveal through abstraction. Her signature style serves comedy – such as her work-for-hire efforts on ADVENTURE TIME and RICK & MORTY books and her own wild FHTAGN & LOATHING – and darker themes, such as NOSFERATU! and the CASKET LAND RPG. The truth is, her work exists in the tension between the two. Enger’s THE BONES OF THIS PLACE Kickstarter campaign (with literally HOURS to go) promises a horizontal aspect ratio 48 page 9×6 hardcover “graphic homage to loneliness and unwanted transformation.”

It seemed like the concept pre-dates your health crisis, how did the life-imitating-art factor shape the work?

I got sick first. I’ve always LOVED Liches, but I’d been not feelin’ great for about 6 months before I knew I wanted to do this story.

So, obviously I didn’t start turning to a toothy monster, or have one of my legs fall off so I could become some sort of eye-covered snake…But, I started changing inside and out. It was so fast too, just one day everything was different and it wasn’t going to go back to the way it had been. It didn’t matter if I didn’t want to adapt or be like this…It was just gonna be.

That part…is probably the most imitational. ARE wakes up – and it’s not like their life before didn’t happen – it just doesn’t matter anymore. One day it just doesn’t matter. And each day you forget a little more about how things used to be and…you just have to stop caring.

That sounds so nihilistic – I promise I’m not. But that’s how I felt, how I feel.

You mentioned Inktober as an ignition for the project. How did that come to pass?

I started doing Inktober in 2016 – I didn’t know how to draw animals, so I set out to draw 31 days of werewolves (later I collected them into a book called “ALL WEREWOLVES MUST GO!”). It worked uhh…too well? And I started kind of being known for these gross stoner punk werewolves… In 2017, I aimed to set the record straight – Vampires are better than Werewolves – with my favorite vampire of all time – Count Orlok. I basically just…updated the film with new, cheeky, illustrations based off the movie. It was a hit, so in 2018 I Kickstarted it into a really nice Inktober edition. I didn’t want to do it in 2018, but my buddy was like “I’m not gonna let you not do it!” so I was scrambling to find a theme in September. The beach and my weird body pulled through on that one and I did THE BONES OF THIS PLACE in October 2018!