Coffee, ghosts + romance: Christmas + Luiz team for ‘Crema’

The graphic novel by Johnnie Christmas, Dante Luiz and Ryan Ferrier arrives from comiXology Originals next week.

ComiXology Originals will drop another new graphic next week titled Crema. The digital release is by the creative team of Johnnie Christmas (Tartarus), Hugo-Award finalist Dante Luiz and letterer Ryan Ferrier.

“I wrote most of it in coffee shops around Vancouver, pounding copious amounts of caffeine and listening to hours of cafe talk,” Christmas said. “Dante’s art is beautiful. We were going for magical realism and fabulism in the modern context, utilizing color shifts in places to further heighten romance and ghostly terror.”

Here’s the description from comiXology:

Esme loves coffee. She works as a barista at a Brooklyn coffee shop and knows everything there is to know about the stuff. But when she drinks too much, she can actually see . . . and talk to . . . ghosts.  In fact, Gerry the ghost has been her friend since she was a young child.

Esme often feels invisible, until she meets Yara, heiress to the coffee shop and its coffee bean provider Cherry Mountain Farm. Their world is turned upside down when Esme discovers a mysterious letter written in old Portuguese and encounters the strange ghost of an Old-World nobleman, in the basement of the coffee shop.  In the midst of a sexy whirlwind romance, the discovery leads Esme and Yara to the deteriorating (and said to be haunted) coffee plantation in Brazil bringing dark and sinister tidings of unrequited love. Will Yara sell her family’s coffee plantation? Will Esme find peace—and an escape from the ghosts that visit her?

The magical realism OGN will be available on comiXology and related platforms July 21.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.