Rights sold: Italian (IF), French (Kana) English and Japanese Sample Available   A young engineer's affection for an outdated game character embarks on a hazardous journey that blurs the lines between the virtual gaming world and reality.   In 2088, engineer J stumbles upon a Dream Reality (DR) device, banned after its invention in 2073, at a flea market. Intrigued, J activates an old game, and is thrust into a world where electronic creatures abduct humans, compelling them to read books for brain monitoring. DR makes everything seem hyper-real. J realizes that he stubbornly insists on using DR to enter the game for nothing else but meeting Saya, a character he once rescued in that world. Saya appears to develop consciousness over time and becomes J's constant companion. It’s all a game, but J isn't sure whether it's a dream or reality. How genuine are the emotions? Have J's actions bugged Saya? Or is Saya a glitch in the game? A new unsettling subplot emerges as the boundaries between game and reality blur. Trapped in the game world, J and Saya find love, prompting Saya to  restart the game repeatedly to keep their connection. Guided by a ram-headed character who seems to know the entire truth, J's subconscious awakens and determines to destroy the DR device, but which means Saya shall unavoidable being vanished. Ding Pao-Yen is a contemporary artist and cartoonist. His love of online games and science fiction come together in a dream world like an active volcano that transforms into a bizarre, lava-like worldview in his work. The book was inspired by the author's love of role-playing in online games.  He once grew fond of a minor female character in one of the games, but her story ended after she’d accomplished her mission. Still, the author returns to the game to visit her from time to time. The idea of “nothing happened” makes him appeared to be lonely, which eventually be the theme of the story.   1 Volume (end) 12.8 x 18.8 mm Black & White + 4 pages in 4 colors  

A young boy types into a search engine: THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. It is there that he decides to go.   With his bag on his back and map in his hand, he jumps into a taxi headed for the bus station. In the night, the taxi collides head-on with a mysterious humanoid creature. Its face was covered with eyes. The young boy had never seen anything like this. As the driver gets off eagerly to harvest the creature, he explains that it is an endangered species highly prized for its eyes as rare camera lenses, its blood is delicious like milk tea, and its flesh is as tender as Matsusaka beef…   Learning that the bus is delayed 24 hours, a young artist offers the boy a ride to his destination. Together, they will stop in an old fossilized city and meet "The Doc", a scientist who has the gift of bringing creatures back to life and who knows the secret of the world. But the journey doesn’t end there…   In Road to Nowhere, Pao-Yen Ding delivers a captivating science fiction story in a universe between large metropolises and submerged cities. Confronting technology and nature threatened with disappearance, we can't help but think of the recurring themes in Hayao Myazaki's films. A big fan of science fiction, Pao-Yen Ding, has fun with all the codes of the genre. In dusty settings with lunar landscapes and organic-futuristic architecture, its characters use all kinds of high-tech objects and cross different parallel worlds to try to unravel the secret of a submerged world. The author splits reality, modifies memories and even erases the memories of his characters to offer us a breathtaking surrealist story with Dickian overtones.