Radiator Comics is proud to announce we will be publishing UM Volume One by buttercup to debut at the Small Press Expo in September 2024.
UM is a magical girl comic about Eugenée, a Black, nonbinary, aspiring birth-worker who finds themself mixed up in a millennia-old conflict between the powers that be and a faction of cosmic, shamanic midwives.
We are running a pre-order campaign via Crowdfundr, March 4 – 31, 2024 to offset the production cost of the book. You can preview the campaign, and sign up to be notified when it launches at crowdfundr.com/umvolume1
UM is an ongoing webcomic, updated most Saturdays at https://um.the-comic.org. buttercup mixes mysticism, superhero tropes, and slice-of-life drama into a compelling narrative. With UM, buttercup seeks to craft a text with the essence of the storied history of resistance within the African Diaspora against global imperialism using imaginative play and science-fantasy as a liberation praxis, and a foundation for realizing Black continuity into the distant future.
UM Vol.1 collects the first six chapters of the webcomic, along with minicomics that support Eugenée’s story. This first volume is edited by Jamila Rowser (Washday Diaries, Ode to Keisha) and Steenz (Heart of the City, Archival Quality).
buttercup (b. 1988) is an Afroindigenous animator, illustrator, and sequential artist whose previous works include Dawn Richard’s Voodoo (Interlude) video clip, various bumpers for Adult Swim, and illustrations for Real Realm, a minicomic written by Jamila Rowser. Their illustration series ARTHROPOD explores the eponymous phylum of animals through the playful imagination of a Black, gender-nonconforming child. buttercup views their work, including and especially UM, as an exploration of the Black Imaginary and Prophetic Tradition as well as a visual excavation of the esoteric through a materialist lens.