Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Steeplechase is a short comic that featured in a Coney Island themed edition of Smoke Signal, a free comics newspaper which is distributed around New York. Gabe Fowler, owner of Desert Island Comics in Brooklyn, New York and the organiser of the Comic Arts Brooklyn festival, is the editor and publisher of Smoke Signal. The challenge was to produce a one page short story for the comic.

How the brief was fulfilled

I decided to base my story on a true event in 1907, where Steeplechase park, a major theme park in Coney Island, burned to the ground. Its owner, Geo Tilyus defiantly advertised that visitors could come visit the burning ruins, at the price of 10 cent. A story that went viral in newspapers in its day. I also wanted to reflect the hedonistic reputation that the theme park’s visitors had in the early twentieth century.