William Burroughs Graphic Novel to Be Published at Last

Ah Pook Is Here, a graphic novel written by William Burroughs with art by Malcolm McNeill in the early ’70s, will be published in complete form by Gary Groth of Fantagraphics Books next year.

The project, about a Mayan death god and a billionaire’s quest for immortality, began as a monthly comic strip in English magazine Cyclops in 1970. After the magazine went out of business, Burroughs and McNeill developed it into a full graphic novel. Their publisher went out of business in 1974 before the book appeared, however, and the creators were unable to find another publisher. A text-only version was first published in 1979, but the complete “Word/Image novel” has never appeared before.