They say all press is good press, but I’ll be honest: I don’t know if that applies here, because Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide note was found inside a graphic novel.
The news comes via the New York Times, which right under the headline “Purported Epstein Suicide Note Is Released” is the subheadline, “A federal judge released the note on Wednesday, which Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate said he found in a graphic novel. The New York Times has not authenticated that Mr. Epstein wrote it.”
Now, there are a lot of important questions about this. Is the note real? Did Epstein write it? And what does it mean, if the pedophile and abuser did, indeed, die by suicide versus the multiple conspiracy theories about how he went out. But if you’re like me, aka, brain totally broken, the main question is… Which graphic novel? That’s certainly a question, and online at least there were plenty of jokes. But can we figure out which graphic novel Epstein was reading before his death? Sorry, alleged graphic novel.
Last November, while combing through 18,000 of Epstein’s emails, Bloomberg assembled a rough reading list for the convicted sex offender. Books included Lolita, books by Woody Allen, books about Trump and cryptocurrency… All the things you might expect. However, the list doesn’t seem to include any graphic novels (as far as I can tell), so if Epstein was busy reading Batman or was getting into Invincible, it doesn’t say there.
That said, this is a graphic novel he had when he was in prison, and back in 2019. So it could be something older he got from the prison library, or a newer book that he… Ordered? In prison? I don’t know, my main experience with all this is watching Shawshank Redemption. Per Diamond (RIP), the top-selling graphic novels of the year were Watchmen, Saga, Umbrella Academy and Monstress, in that order. So maybe one of those? I’m sorry?
Hitting an impasse after “reading one article,” I looked at the publicly available Epstein Files provided by the government, and most of the scant emails that mention graphic novels are from Kickstarter, which Epstein was not pledging; he was just on the mailing list. There are two exceptions. The first is a long email thread about a cancer benefit that mentions Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s 2009 memoir Cancer Vixen, with Epstein only responding once some pictures come through in a Facebook link with “I look so old!!!!”
The second, and slightly more eye-opening set of documents are financial reports from ADW Capital Partners from February 17, 2016. Why is this interesting? That’s because the documents are about ADW’s investment in… IDW. And they call out mostly media properties like Wynonna Earp, but specifically also mention, “One of the Company’s most famous properties, ‘Locke and Key,’ is co-owned with Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son).”
Look, someone more financially minded than me should explain this, but as far as I can gather, ADW, which it’s likely Epstein was an investor in (given he was receiving emails from the fund) was heavily invested in IDW. And so much so that on March 5, 2019, ADW urged a sale of IDW in a publicly released press release. Later than month, IDW hired JP Morgan to explore a sale, and then less than five months later, on August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein, who we’ve now established was conclusively a huge fan of Locke & Key, committed suicide. Coincidence??? Yes.
Other than which graphic novel Epstein was reading (please do not under any circumstances tell me it’s Trouble), the follow-up question is whether whoever created that graphic novel would want to know. Like, if he was making his was through Black Hammer, would Jeff Lemire be happy about that? Maybe about a fellow Jeff picking up his work, but literally nothing else about that would be good — the book would forever be associated with “hey did you know Jeffrey Epstein put his suicide note in that?”
Particularly at a moment when graphic novels are in an ascendance, gaining more relevance and selling better than they have for years, frankly we probably could have done without the potential lurid “Jeffrey Epstein Suicide Book” sales bump in the comic book industry. But hey, at the very least maybe he checked out Locke & Key. That book is great!
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I have to know. Thank you for trying but this isn’t a confident enough assessment for me. I need to know what graphic novel made him want to hang himself.
I have to know, please, I’m begging the court to tell us