High Fidelity meets Wayne’s World in this utterly charming graphic memoir about a young man’s life-long obsession with the rock band Queen. All of us have had that one band with which we identify, the band that was always there for us during good times and bad. For Mike Dawson it's always been Queen and Freddie Mercury. Not unlike “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddie & Me takes readers on a rock-opera-like journey—from Mike’s childhood in the UK, through high school in New Jersey, and into the nineties, when grunge ruled the day and Queen was terminally uncool. As Mike works to navigate the trials and tribulations that accompany the road to adulthood (with Queen behind him every step of the way), he must grapple with the fears we all find ourselves facing: committing to one person for the rest of our lives, pursuing our dream job, coming to terms with our familial responsibilities, and even facing our own mortality. With humor, sensitivity, and some wonderfully imagined appearances by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley (among others), Freddie & Me is a touching reminder of how our favorite music is the soundtrack for so many of our most important memories and moments. And how one note can bring them all flooding back.
Author
Mike Dawson was born in England, and emigrated to the United States in 1986, where his family settled in Red Bank, New Jersey. He studied painting at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Since 2005 Dawson's work has appeared in a number of comics anthologies, including AdHouse Books successful Project: Superior collection, and issue #1 of the spin-off series, Superior Showcase. His first graphic novel, entitled Freddie & Me, an epic and unabashedly autobiographical story about his lifelong obsession with Freddie Mercury and the rock band Queen, was published in 2008 by Bloomsbury in the USA and Jonathan Cape in Great Britain. Italian, Spanish, French, and Czech editions are all planned.
