Under the Surface Q&A with Chris W. Kim
Closing Act examines the complex networks that make up a city and finds a strange, shifting environment within it, one where its inhabitants face a looming existential threat.
Lea walks her usual route through the city when a young man steals her bag. She chases him into an alley but quickly loses her bearings—each alley leads into yet another alley, the sounds of the city fade away, and the thief is nowhere to be seen. Hopelessly searching for an exit, she eventually encounters Dee, one of the alleyfolk who obsessively makes maps of his surroundings and is convinced that the alleys have been gradually narrowing over time. The more of these alleyfolk Lea gets to know, the more she sees that they agree: the labyrinth they inhabit is shifting, creating a state of deep uncertainty. When the presence of the thief becomes a subject of contention, Lea finds herself entangled in the affairs of a world fated to end soon.
Q&A:
Adherent was very much about the act of writing, or at least trying to find a writer to unlock secrets. In Closing Act there seems to be a similar theme at play but with drawing. The maps made by the alleyfolk take on great significance since they can never be accurate. Would you say they are connected?
There’s definitely a connection, though I didn’t notice it until I was deep into writing Closing Act. At first, having some characters draw maps seemed natural because of the labyrinthine nature of the alleyways. Then the idea of mapmaking, and drawing in general, became more elaborate as I continued to write the story. I think the connection runs through a lot of my comics, something about the question of representation, in the broad sense of the word. The writer in Adherent tries to represent the world around her via writing, but feels she failed. The people in Closing Act try to represent the world of the alleys via mapmaking and drawing, but know it’s an impossible task. The idea of representation, of one thing standing in for another, has always interested me, as well as the limits of representation. And after all, people who draw are concerned with how well they’re representing their subject. But this all comes about very intuitively when I’m writing, where it seems like my mind can’t help but be preoccupied by certain subjects.
The shifting landscape of the alleys is the entire world the book explores. You live in the big city of Toronto. Is Closing Act a comment on the alienation you feel there? Is this landscape actually Toronto? Do you wander the alleys in your neighbourhood. What do you find?
Do I feel a sense of alienation in Toronto? Probably no more than the average city dweller. There’s always a feeling of pressure coming from the city, whether it’s ever increasing rents and prices, poor planning and funding, etc. It can feel like the city is trying to push you away a lot of the time. The landscape in the story is partly based off of Toronto, but I also used reference photos from Chicago, New York, and Japan, so if anything it’s a mash-up, a universal city. In comics, I think this commonly happens when using reference from the internet, where you end up pulling images from all over the place and create this composite world. I’ve always liked looking at alleys and taking photos of them, so Closing Act began with the simple thought of setting an entire story within these spaces. Though I don’t wander through them very much, I used to work at a store in Toronto where I’d spend time in an alley receiving merchandise from delivery vans. There were screaming teenagers, passing cats, people urinating right by the receiving door… But I always liked being out there, away from the store and the main streets, and it showed up a lot in my dreams. So to me they’re like little refuges within the city, and the book isn’t so much a commentary as a way of exploring these types of spaces.
Closing Act launches April 2026, and is available for pre-order now!