Brian Blomerth's Lilly Wave by Brian Blomerth

A visual biography of the infamous ketamine researcher John C. Lilly.

Since 2019, graphic novelist Brian Blomerth's stunningly original comix histories have combined detailed research and riotous visual wit to illuminate the discovery of LSD (in Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day) and the popularization of psilocybin mushrooms (in Brian Blomerth's Mycelium Wassonii). Now, in the third entry in his ongoing series, Blomerth opens a porthole on the life, experiments, and addictions of John C. Lilly-the man whose development of the isolation tank, controversial studies in dolphin cognition, and ketamine-fueled dives into the nature of consciousness made him perhaps the most notorious researcher of the psychedelic era. Featuring alien visitations, interspecies encounters, and no shortage of concerned onlookers, Brian Blomerth's Lilly Wave sees a beloved artist working from an expanded palette of industrial ink-splatter and oceanic airbrushing to bring readers a story that's equal parts cosmic and paranoid, transcendent and tragic.

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the Founder and President of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics, among numerous other studies on the use of marijuana and psychedelic drugs in cancer treatment, psychotherapy, and the catalyzation of religious experiences. In 1986, he founded MAPS, which has since become one of the world's foremost non-profit research and educational organizations investigating the healing potential of psychedelics.

"New York City-based cartoonist Brian Blomerth details an event in his graphic novel debut that's seemingly tailor-made for him. Working in the grandiose, psychedelic style that he has for years, Blomerth's "Bicycle Day" imports Hofmann's riveting yarn from the annals of medical history to comics with busy panels and rampant anthropomorphism." - LA Times, 2019

"You'd be hard-pressed to find an artist more suited to detailing Hofmann's trip than Brooklyn-based cartoonist Brian Blomerth. Through his surreal and psychedelic illustrations, Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day, drops in on Albert Hoffman's iconic acid experience and retells it in unique form." - Hero Magazine, 2019

Praise for Brian Blomerth's Mycelium Wassonii:

"Blomerth's work here is a visual tour de force and a work of creative nonfiction." - Hyperallergic, 2021

"Blomerth's fanciful and colorful illustrations offer a largely joyous overview of the couple's work together, which Wasson continued to do for decades after Pavlovna's death in 1958." - The New Yorker, 2021