Manga Matrix

READ Books is pleased to announce the launch of Manga Matrix a comic/manga artist book by Dan Starling, with contributions from Steffanie Ling, Deanna Li, Wake Cook, Siqi Yang, Tajliya Jamal, Natalia Soto, and Kobie Gingras-Fox. The book is risograph printed by Moniker Press. 

Manga Matrix is inspired by the need for new post-colonial and post-patriarchal narratives that break with the conventions of storytelling in popular media and propose a new way to imagine ourselves individually and collectively. The starting point for the work is the narrative story arc of the hero’s journey and its persistent use in popular culture. To overcome this simplistic yet stubborn mythology, Manga Matrix seeks to maintain a state of tension in which conflict doesn’t resolve in an overly simplistic manner, realist conventions don’t suppress artifice, actions do not flow seamlessly, and interruption is the norm. The “conclusion” of the book consists of a series of lithographic prints that begin as representations but progressively become more and more layered with abstract images, obliterating the narrative and eventually becoming saturated with black ink so that the hero’s journey “stops being written”. 

Dan Starling is a Vancouver-based artist whose research-driven practice investigates how art can unsettle dominant cultural narratives. Drawing on strategies of intervention, repetition, and recombination, his work addresses how myths maintain the status quo while also imagining futures that are more equitable and just. 

Starling has re-written Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to address its suppressed racism, re-cast Star Wars with a critical chorus to debate democracy and re-made Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil to confront cultural amnesia. His print series Unsettled Histories reinterprets Rembrandt’s The Three Crosses (1653), aligning it with contemporary concerns around decolonization and climate change. 

Starling holds a Meisterschüler from the Städelschule, Frankfurt, and is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. His recent exhibitions include Visual Space Gallery (2026), This Gallery (2025), Burnaby Art Gallery (2022) and Klondike Institute of Art & Culture (2021). His work has been shown internationally at Kunsthall Oslo, Kunstverein Frankfurt, and M HKA Antwerp. 

For more information, please visit www.danstarling.com