‘American Cult’ Reveals The Truth Behind The Salacious Headlines
by James Ferguson
Silver Sprocket is set to release American Cult this May. The anthology provides a graphic history of religious cults in America over the centuries as the country has been home to spiritual seekers since its earliest days. Americans have turned to some unconventional prophets seeking answers and divine truths. Now these stories will be told in this 208-page graphic novel.
In 1694, the religious tolerance of the Pennsylvania Colony enticed a Transylvanian monk and his forty followers to cross the Atlantic. Almost two hundred years later, a charismatic preacher founded a utopian community in Oneida, New York, that practiced socialism and free love. In the 1960s and ’70s, a new generation of seekers gathered in vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles, Satanic coffee shops in New Orleans, and fortified communes in Philadelphia. And in the twenty-first century, gurus use self-help seminars and get-rich-quick schemes to evangelize to their flocks.
Editor Robyn Chapman has assembled a team of over twenty people from comics journalism who dig deep into the truth of these cults from the infamous to the obscure. These include the Manson Family, NXIVM, the Oneida Community, MOVE, the Branch Davidians, Synanon, Heaven’s Gate, the Westboro Baptist Church, the People’s Temple, and more.
Creators include Lara Antal, Brian “Box” Brown, Ryan Carey, Rosa Colón Guerra, Mike Dawson, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg, Mike Freiheit, Emi Gennis, Andrew Greenstone, Janet Harvey, Josh Kramer, Jesse, Lambert, Ellen Lindner, Lonnie Mann, Ben Passmore, Jim Rugg, Robert Sergel, Vreni Stollberger, Steve Teare, and J.T. Yost.
American Cult is set for release in May 2021 at the Silver Sprocket store and your local comic shop. The 208-page black-and-white graphic novel will retail for $24.99.
