The Sculptor

David is giving his life for his art—literally. 


Thanks to a deal with Death, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands. But now that he only has 200 days to live, deciding what to create is harder than he thought, and discovering the love of his life at the eleventh hour isn’t making it any easier. 


This is a story of desire taken to the edge of reason and beyond; of the frantic, clumsy dance steps of young love; and a gorgeous, street-level portrait of New York City. It’s about the small, warm, human moments of everyday life . . . and the great surging forces that lie just under the surface. 


Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work; now he vaults into breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable fiction.


“The best graphic novel I’ve read in years. It’s about art and love and why we keep on trying. It will break your heart.” —Neil Gaiman 


“Totally absorbing and technically brilliant.” —Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) 


“A graphic novel big enough to pull all manner of ideas and emotions to its heart. This inventive and touching love story is compelling proof that McCloud can walk the walk as well as talking the talk.” —The Guardian


“What a brilliant and gripping book. As absorbing as a Victorian novel in terms of character and moral ideas, it somehow manages to be both an inquiry into the subjectivity of art and a zippy portrait of 21st-century hipster urban life.” —The Observer (Graphic Novel of the Month)


“A diamond-bright treasure trove of beautiful observations about art and loneliness and a soul-touching examination of the joys and pain of being in love... You need to read this.” —Starburst


“A 500-page epic on artistic inspiration, reputation and such trifling matters as love and death, it’s a winning combination of 19th-century novelistic ambition in hipster clothing.” —Herald Scotland


“This is a wonderful book, an instant classic, full of complicated and hard ideas made deceptively simple and dangerously elegant by dint of a full mastery of the comics medium. It was years in the making, and well worth the wait.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing


“Everything in these delicate monochrome panels has been considered; every angle calculated, every expression caught… There’s a master at work here, and you can feel it on every page.” —The Telegraph


“It is, quite simply, a masterclass in graphic storytelling... If Understanding Comics was the research, The Sculptor is the finished thesis – far more than the sum of its parts, and a wonderful testament to the power of comics.” —Independent on Sunday