I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (2021) Cover & pg.85

Cover and page of the amazing I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Mannie Murphy, which starts as an almost personal journal/diary/fanzine about River Phoenix but slowly and incredibly expands out to an investigation into the history of racism and white supremacy in Portland. A year after reading it and I am still in awe of how Mannie manages to pull this off all while never loosing sight of the personal connection the book starts with.

I really love this book and was extremely excited to be able to get the cover. Even before I knew what this book was about I saw it pop up for pre order on the Fantagraphics website and this image was arresting.

Mannie painted pages with blue ink and ink washes directly on vintage newspaper handwriting paper from reference images right to ink so no sketching or prep which adds to the over diary/journal feeling of the book. This page does not have the text from the page as it was added later.

The page first appeared in 2016 in the zine "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Part 2: Ken Death is Dead" and was later collected by Fantagraphics in 2021.

This book was on many critics best of 2021 lists.


Ink, ink wash, white acrylic ink and marker on vintage newsprint handwriting paper.

8 1/2 x 11"