Polybius Dreams

The arcade was supposed to be safe.

At school, they were bullied, but when the bell rang, Patrick, Michael, and Paul could always count on blowing off some steam playing video games and pinball. In the small town of Autumn Hill, there wasn’t much else to do.

But then the whole town seemed to go crazy, and it was right after that new game with the weird name showed up. Suddenly the arcade wasn’t as much fun anymore. The kids became sinister and violent. Some of their classmates went missing from school or got in trouble with the law. And the bully that wouldn’t leave them alone… why did he commit suicide?

Now the parents are organizing, looking for something to blame for the danger their children are in. Can a video game really cause this much damage?

art by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer & Josh Jenson
A coming of age, psychological horror tragedy set in 1986, POLYBIUS DREAMS is a loose retelling of the popular internet urban legend about a killer video game.
 

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The Team


Writer- Ben Grisanti
Ben studied Sociology and Media at DePaul University. He has published academic work on the study of superheroes and self publishes a horror comedy comic book called INSURANCE, about an insurance office that handles magical and haunted artifacts.
Illustrator- Keith Grachow
Keith Grachow has been a graphic artist for the last 20 years and has worked for Play Along Toys, and for Disney Animation as a digital ink and paint artist. His print work includes a series of children’s books and the independent comic books CONCRETE MARTIANS and SALTWATER.
Colorist- Ester Salguero
Comic colorist, Illustrator, Book Designer, Letterer. Comic artist for IDW, Titan Comics, and Disney, among others. 
art by Kelly Williams
POLYBIUS DREAMS addresses the dubious link between videogames and social problems. Set against the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, we want to emphasize that the question of whether video games can be harmful to the player is as much a part of popular culture as the games we’ve all grown to love. 
In adapting the urban legend, we want to create a unique experience for the reader while preserving the mystery surrounding the game. We’ve changed some aspects of the original story, and developed a design motif particular to our world. We are focusing on the development of our main characters, as they discover that life at the beginning of high school is difficult enough without the introduction of a nefarious arcade game that seems to be hypnotizing all the children in the community into committing acts of violence. In bringing this story to you, we are leaving the mythology and mystery of the game mostly intact so other artists may expand on it as they see fit.
Whether or not you're already familiar with the urban legend, we believe you will find a compelling character drama in POLYBIUS DREAMS that is charming, nostalgic, and above all else, terrifying.

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