In 2017, after having lived in Amsterdam for coming up on a decade, the ex-pat native of Cleveland, OH, Chad Bilyeu wasn’t sure what to do next. After a meaningful encounter with Harvey Pekar’s original, self-published run of American Splendor, he decided: comics. And so he embarked on the journey that became the comic book series, Chad in Amsterdam, which has to date yielded six issues, all entirely written, edited, art-directed and self-published by Chad. These six issues have now all been collected in a spiffy hardcover volume from Scratch Books, along with a forward – well actually, a voorward – by EI-P of alt-hip-hop fame, and an all new introduction – here, a vlotte babbel (to slide you into the Dutch swing of things) – by Chad himself; plus an appendix composed of annotations, a Marvel Universe-style capsule bio and a smattering of documentary photographs..
