FICTION: On The Ledge by Thomas Trang

A comic strip I wrote from 2019.

Dec 23, 2025

2019 was when I first started getting some of my writing published. There was a sci-fi story that came out in the Revolutions 2 anthology, and a short comic strip that was published in FutureQuake around the same time. The SF/WEIRD FICTION anthology is still available at the usual places, but the issue of FutureQuake is much harder to track down these days.

FutureQuake was a small comic press with links to 2000AD, which to the uninitiated is the home of Judge Dredd and where many British writers like Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, and Alan Moore got started. There is one Alan Moore story I read as a kid in the back of an old Judge Dredd comic about a guy who can slip into different dimensions. He takes advantage of this by discovering a penniless Van Gogh selling paintings on the street, war profiteering, all the different ways you possibly could. It goes great until it doesn’t.

This story completely blew my 12 year old mind and opened up the possibilities of fiction, so having my first ever fiction published in the EXACT SAME 4-page format many years later felt like kismet - even though the Revolutions 2 anthology came out a week or so before it, but I’d never let facts get in the way of a cool anecdote.

(Now I think about it, the Alan Moore story also sounds like the kernel of influence that led to my novella THE WORLD BEHIND US. It’s a time travel story - but with very similar ideas of people exploiting others from the vantage point of the future, or some other timeline with superior knowledge.)

Unfortunately, with the untimely passing of FutureQuake head honcho Dave Evans in 2021 (he did the lettering for my story), the magazine has been on indefinite hiatus.

So I’ve thrown the story up here.

If you only know my writing from DARK NEON & DIRT, comics and sci-fi might seem like a strange pivot from that novel, or vice versa, but that’s the sandpit where I started writing. I also maintain that DARK NEON has a subtle fabulist/surreal quality to it, something akin to a Californian neo-noir fever dream.

(At one point, the book opened with the header of LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 2019. Which - by pure coincidence - is where/when my book starts before jumping around in both time and location . . . but it’s also featured in the opening of a certain iconic sci-fi film you’re probably all familiar with.)

I am also a huge fan of comics to this day (much to the chagrin of my wife) - Adrian Tomine and Daniel Clowes have pride of place on my shelves. I’m a collector of all things Simon Stålenhag (okay so not strictly speaking “comics” but illustrated storytelling or graphic novels), and I’m obsessed with Jean Giraud aka Moebius. I’m not so much into superhero stuff these days (though a darker Batman or Daredevil run might catch my eye), and I haven’t followed Image Comics for a few years but they were doing some amazing stuff in the 2010s. Bitch Planet, Southern Bastards, Lazarus. Brubaker and Phillips are always a buy on sight combo.

Anyway, I’d love to be writing comics but there’s only so many hours in the day, plus there’s the distinct challenge of me having zero illustrative abilities. For this story, I worked with a very talented artist from Mexico named JP Vilchis. He’s still around doing things. Look him up.

Merry Christmas, stay safe, and see you all in 2026.

I should have some news about my next book by then.