SVK

SVK is a collaboration between writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Crooked Little Vein, RED), artist Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker (Stickleback, Lazarus Churchyard, 2000AD) and London-based design studio BERG.

An experimental publication, SVK comprises the SVK object and a comic book.

Comics break the rules of storytelling, invent new ones, and break them again – more often than almost any other medium. This graphic novella is about looking – an investigation into perception, storytelling and optical experimentation that inherits some of the curiosities behind the previous work of BERG.

Litho printed on 115gsm silk paper in tones of black and blue, SVK uses a third ink invisible without the SVK object. The object is a UV light source which unlocks hidden layers woven throughout the comic book. Reading SVK becomes a unique and strange experience as you see the story unfold through the eyes of Thomas Woodwind.

First and foremost SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”.

It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.