BOOM! Studios has announced Happiness Will Follow, a new graphic novel memoir from Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated cartoonist Mike Hawthorne that will arrive in May 2020.
Happiness Will Follow tells the true and tragic story of enduring abuse and discovering a love of art that helped him to build the home he never had in this graphic memoir about family, survival, and what it means to be Puerto Rican in America.
Mike Hawthorne’s mother, Blanca Otero, was a proud though atypical Puerto Rican woman from Santurce, San Juan who moved to the mainland, where she became a single mother and struggled to raise her son alone in New York City, a place that tormented them both with its unforgiving nature. But when Mike falls victim to a death curse—a haunting sign of the old country that his mother could never truly escape—she begins a series of events that drive him away from her both physically and emotionally, leaving him to grapple with his complicated relationships with his mother, identity, and heritage.
“Many will know me from my work on Spider-man and Deadpool but with HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW, I’m digging deeper into my personal history than I ever have in my career,” said cartoonist Mike Hawthorne in a press release from BOOM! Studios. “While HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW may seem like a straightforward memoir, I believe it truly serves as an illustration of what it means to be Puerto Rican in the United States. What it means to have a nationality with no real nation. I hope you’ll be onboard with me.”
Happiness Will Follow arrives in May 2020.
