By ILYA (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-914224-53-9 (TPB)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Vital Vintage Verve & Vitriol to Vamp Up the Season of Virtue and Mystery …9/10
This book includes Discriminatory Content included for comedic and dramatic effect.
Take it from an old print and publishing lag. A book has to be good to be released in fancy prestige hardcover mid year and re-released for Christmas as a mass market paperback. Just ask other British comics sensation Jamie Smart…
The Man called ILYA is a multi-award winning comic book writer and artist whose work has been published by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Kodansha and independent companies all over the world. Previous prose and/or pictorial accomplishments include the Manga Drawing Kit; Time Warp: The Future’s Now… and it’s a Riot; BIC; The End of the Century Club sequence; Room for Love; The Clay Dreaming and modern sequential graphic drama Skidmarks. Commercial clients comprise the BBC, Royal Academy of Arts, newspapers including The Times, Guardian, East End Life and legendary stripzine Deadline.
ILYA has worked with Eddie Campbell on Deadface and Bacchus, edits the Mammoth Book of Best New Manga series, and – like all comics creators – fosters a secret identity by sometimes answering to the soubriquet Ed Hillyer…
His latest venture combined an obvious love of British mythologies, whimsies and historical micro-cultures, cunningly interwoven with cheeky comics lore from across the earth. A genre-mixing mystery yarn of the strange and (potentially) paranormal, this potent pastiche debut yarn introduces a brace of old-fashioned odd fellows visibly seen evolving into an emergent crime-solving association…
The unfolding imbroglio is delivered primarily in welcoming pencil hues and traditional block-text & image format (with the occasional modern graphic narrative tweak): all premiering a fresh pantheon of eclectic wonders, as we joyously peep into the closeted lives of a troupe of travelling entertainers perambulating around Victorian England. Revelations are seen through the learning experiences and rapid advancement of a secretive neophyte recently enrolled as a stage hand, and the bizarrely enigmatic living attraction who befriends and adopts the secretive newcomer…
Romo the Wolfboy (… in Strange Case of Cackle and Hide) heaps tragedy upon mystery as tight-lipped “Francis X” – who ran away to the circus for reasons of their own – develops a few transformative friendships (and some foe-making) after being accepted into the closed family circuit of Blimey O’Riley’s Travelling Circus. The serried hierarchical ranks of outsiders have their own ways, cherished observances and even unique language – and also hard-held misconceptions and prejudices – but Francis is smiled upon by Ringmaster O’Riley himself. It’s an attraction and fascination shared by the weird, non-verbal freak who is said to have been raised by wild animals…
As Francis & Romo spar and bond, they come to grips with this oddly-enclosed world in miniature; one that encompasses love and hate, fear and acceptance and all the broad panoply of human life in between. However, everything takes an unpleasant and even uncanny turn after the big top is set up in the next village. Here, despite the gob-smacked anticipation of the locals, sabotage, unwarranted assaults and ultimately murder-attempts start chipping away at the wandering clan’s solidarity, Soon a monstrous uncannily giggling villain is recognised if not actually identified, and Romo and Francis X are catapulted into the role of guardians and problem-solvers. The hunt for the obsessed village elite determined to destroy them all… or at least banish the players from the region… is hard, baffling work, and most disturbingly, many incidents defy logic or reason while somehow connecting past sins to future threats. … And what role do the chickens play in all this?
Bracketed by context-creating preludes ‘The Carny Code’ and ‘Introducing…’ the hilarious, uproarious and outrageous events are balanced by further extras at the end. Enhancing enjoyment with education and elucidation we ‘Roll up Roll up’ to explain historical carny argot “Ciazarn” – readily deployed through the tale to enhance the experience – in a fascinating briefing that seamlessly segues into teasing tweaks of meta-reality moments as the author offers a list of devious ‘Easter Eggs’ buried within the sawdust saga before ending the entertainment with extracts from his ‘Romo the WolfBoy Production Blog’ …
Wry, anachronistically bold, and breezily beguiling, Romo the WolfBoy began as online episodes on ILYA’s Substack, playing out over a year. Thus this unmissable day out delight and jolly jaunt concludes with an acknowledgement of the Kickstarter contributors who helped its transition to the thick comforting pages here with big thank you ‘Made Possible by Public Funds’…
All the fun of the fair plus every additional chill and thrill you could possibly stand besides, the wonderment here is but a teaser of more and greater marvels to come, so read this now, give copies to all your coolest and most well-educated chums – and anyone you’re still trying to impress – and you can all communally agonise in anticipation of forthcoming encore Romo the WolfBoy and Francis X (Investigators of the Paranormal) in The Fall and Rise of Springheeled Tom…
© & ™ Ed Hillyer / ILYAgraphic. All rights reserved.
Romo the WolfBoy (paperback edition) is released on November 26th 2026 and is available for pre-order now