Pitch:
A man lives with his wife. Everyone says she’s dead. Some say she never existed. „The Rusty Tanker” is a 248-page graphic novel about Antoni, who is pulled into a secret group searching for „True Reality” — a hidden layer of existence our senses were never meant to reveal. At the center stands the Rusty Tanker: part place, part being, part gate. Built on Gnostic cosmology and Donald Hoffman’s perception theory, the book fuses psychological thriller with body horror and philosophy in deliberately raw, grotesque, psychedelic art. Published in Poland (BestComics, 2025) to critical acclaim — compared to Lynch, Aronofsky, and Philip K. Dick. Complete English translation available.
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Full Graphic novel:
Ottoich – the author and illustrator
Ottoich is the pen name of Lukasz Hak, a Polish graphic novelist who writes and draws all his work himself. His comics — published by Wydawnictwo Rebel and BestComics — include the occult-grotesque series „Dwa Gwozdzie” (5 volumes), the psychedelic sci-fi „Otwarta Turma,” the multilayered „827,” and „The Rusty Tanker” (BestComics, 2025, 248 pages), which was featured in Onet Kultura (Poland’s largest news portal, reaching over 7 million monthly readers), Wprost (one of Poland’s leading political and cultural weeklies, comparable to Newsweek), Polityka (Poland’s most respected intellectual weekly, comparable to The Economist, rated the book 4/6), Super Express (national daily tabloid), natemat.pl (major digital media outlet), Dziennik Literacki (Polish literary journal covering contemporary literature and independent publishing), and Komiksopedia (Poland’s most comprehensive comics database and review platform, cataloguing every comic published in the country). Full interviews were published in Wprost, natemat.pl, Komiksopedia, and Dziennik Literacki. He holds a PhD in immunology and molecular biology and works as a medical director at Johnson & Johnson, but his deepest fascination lies in occult philosophy, Gnostic and Hermetic traditions, and the history of the weird — he illustrates historical magic books and grimoires, paying tribute to the thinkers who in dark ages used esoteric knowledge to challenge orthodoxy and pursue individual freedom. This dual life — corporate science by day, occult art by night — directly feeds his comics, which live at the intersection of modern research, fringe philosophy, and ancient mystical thought. Currently developing „The Bathhouse,” a sci-fi thriller graphic novel trilogy about brain chips, aliens, and a mysterious structure that grants wishes and turns every one of them against the wisher.