The story of World Central Kitchen...as a graphic novel!

I'm proud to tell you about our newest book, Feeding Dangerously

It’s Monday! Did you all have a nice weekend?

I’m excited today to tell you that World Central Kitchen is about to release a new book—a graphic novel called Feeding Dangerously!

I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am a huge comic book nerd…have any of you ever read Oishinbo? It’s a Japanese series about a food critic who is always trying to find the most amazing food and to create the “ultimate menu.” And maybe you know that my friend Tony Bourdain was also a huge comic book guy…he even published a book called Hungry Ghosts…if you haven’t read it, I would recommend it!

But today, I’m happy to be telling you about this project that I got to work on with brilliant writer Steve Orlando. He’s seriously the Lionel Messi of the comic book world. Look at our first interactions on Twitter, all the way back when I worked on the TV show Hannibal:

So now here we are, it’s November 2023, 10 years later, and our dream has come true. Steve and I kept in touch, and started to put together plans for a book together. He came and joined the World Central Kitchen team as we cooked after Hurricane Michael in Florida in October 2018…so he got a real taste of the work that we do.

And then we started to work on the story, chapter by chapter, from when Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico to the eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala to the Thomas Fire in southern California to Hurricane Florence in North Carolina to Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas…the story evolved and Steve was able to share more and more moments from WCK’s history.

The amazing drawings are by the Italian artist Alberto Ponticelli, and the book is published by my friends at TKO, led by the brilliant Tze Chun and his partner Sal Simeone. Look at this art from Alberto!

And for those of you who know comics, do you know the name Mike Mignola? You might know him for creating a comic called Hellboy…and I am lucky enough to call Mike a friend, along with his wife Christine. They have been huge supporters of World Central Kitchen over the years, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars during the pandemic, when he made sketches while in quarantine and auctioned them off. He’s an amazing guy, and an incredible artist.

Here was Mike’s original art that he shared for the cover…isn’t it amazing?

So friends…what do you think? It might be a little different than something you usually read, but I’m telling you, comics and graphic novels are a great way to tell a story…especially as something as meaningful and human as the story of World Central Kitchen. And of course, sales of the book directly support our work all around the world!

If you have a chance to see the book, tell me what you think. I love it, and I hope you do too…!