Join us at Printed Matter Chelsea to celebrate the launch of Rescue Party, the hardcover edition of Gabe Fowler’s 2020 initiative which invited artists to share comics reflecting on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fowler, owner of the art and comics store Desert Island, will be joined in conversation by Rescue Party contributor Hillary Chute to discuss the project.

Rescue Party is a hardcover compilation of comics curated by Fowler, originally conceived as an online project—its only restriction being that comics needed to take the form of a nine panel grid. Featured comics were then posted to the project’s Instagram account. Over 140 of the project’s entries have been compiled in anthology fashion for this hardcover edition.

Gabe Fowler runs the Brooklyn art and comics store Desert Island, edits and publishes books and zines including the free tabloid Smoke Signal, and directed the Comic Arts Brooklyn festival for eleven years. He teaches zine history at NYU and Cooper Union.

Hillary Chute is an American literary scholar and expert on comics and graphic narratives. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design at Northeastern University, and visiting professor at Harvard University. She is author of seven books about comics.