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BLACK RUST features 55 full page color images, many of which have never been seen before.
From the biomechanical erotica of "The Empress Revealed" to the surreal horror of "The Gimp", BLACK RUST showcases the darker side of Ward's style.
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from the artist's foreward
This is not a story.
No, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. BLACK RUST has none of these; instead, it is a culmination of many pieces of many stories--a collection of thoughts, of what-if's and could-be's, of people and cultures that exist in a world just beneath our own. A mirror reflection of our own lives and fears. BLACK RUST is an encyclopedia and a sourcebook of the fairytales and nightmares that hide just beneath our tired eyelids each night as we lay down to sleep, praying that we will wake once more to remember them.
Each image within tells its own tale--stories of old made new through hardwired bodies, mechanized flesh, and textured souls--but is also part of the greater whole, a larger worldbook. BLACK RUST catalogs the secret histories of men and beasts and political intrigues shaping our destinies while we remain blind to the truth of our existence.
It starts with a simple truth, inherent in all living things: we are born to die. It is within the cold reality of this notion that the fires of BLACK RUST take shape. If we are to die, have we truly anything to gain by living?
BLACK RUST isn't a story.
But it could be.
Chapter 2 - The Day the Earth Died, Pt. 1
We watched the world die, that last day before everything changed. Fire fell from the sky, eating alive anyone caught in its burning kiss. We held each other tightly and watched the skyline melt away.
We whispered our love desperately into each other's ears as the roar of death and destruction grew near. I wiped the tears from her eyes one last time before we were overcome by the world's anger and everything turned to black.
This was the end of everything. The end of us. The end of the world. The end of time.
But that, too, was a lie. We found ourselves reborn into metal and flesh, black rust pumping through our veins like hellfire.
How much time had passed? Who had come to our salvation and dragged our broken bodies from the mud to this cold, damp place?
Gears turned and spun under the shifting weight of my body awakening. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound escaped the steel lips of my new face.
As my eyes adjusted to the gray sodium light I noticed others around me, monsters of decayed flesh and old metal awakening as I did. Someone, somewhere, was crying, whimpers floating through the room like digital sorrow.
Was this Hell?
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