The Takashima Extraction

One hundred years from now, the world is run under a system of corporate feudalism. Each corporation is a fully enclosed and self-sustaining compound. Employees are born into their corporation; parents sign employee contracts for their children.

All a person’s needs are met by their corporation’s benefits: food, shelter, medical care, jobs, funeral arrangements. Employees receive a paycheck and fees are deducted to cover the benefits. Not much money remains once the fees are taken, keeping employees legally and financially bound to their corporation.

It is illegal to break a contract. Employees are contractually obligated to work for their corporation until they die or convince another corporation to buy out their contract. Desperate employees hire external mercenaries to extract them to one of the Free Lands, devoid of a corporate presence.

Each corporation sets the punishment policy for employees who attempt to break their contract. Most opt for corporal punishment over rehabilitation.

Available now as a digital graphic novel and print edition

Selected pages from print edition

The Takashima print proof arrived and looks great! Here are a few pages. Printed by KaBlam! and they did a great job. The first print edition debuted at the 2023 Short Run Comix & Art Festival in Seattle.

The Takashima Extraction is a passion project I’ve been working on since 2017. The story grew out of another story I wrote in 2009 but has a rather large cast and my photo editing skills were not up to the task. Takashima became the proof of concept that began as a bjd photo story – it’s a thing in the bjd world. I wanted to take take it out of the standard bjd photo story into new territory. Takashima grew into a graphic novel published in June 2023.

The images are composite photos edited in Photoshop then run through PhotographyBB Photoshop actions From Dusk Till Dawn. The images are selectively hand painted to refine the images and remove distracting elements. Look closely at the story backgrounds and notice there are no door handles, electrical outlets, electrical cables or light sconces.

The final images are dropped into Comic Book Maker to enhance the illustrated look.

Creating the Art of Takashima

There is no AI-generated art in Takashima. The story was created entirely with photographs. Check out my post on The Art of Takashima to see how I took this photo of Keaton and Camille to the single page panel in the book: