December 24, 2025
Survival Chronicles
The diary becomes a graphic novel
What is this?
It all started with a diary. Pages written during a collapse. Notes from someone trying to survive when the world falls apart.
That diary exists. You can read it here, on this website. It's raw, unfiltered, uncomfortable. And now it's going to become a graphic novel.
The contest
I launched a different kind of proposal. I didn't want portfolios, or resumes, or lists of publishers. None of that mattered to me.
The only thing I asked was simple: read the diary.
The project is born from that text. Everything starts there. If you didn't read it, you couldn't understand what I was looking for. And if you didn't understand it, you couldn't be part of this.
The rules
- Read the entire diary
- Choose whatever part you want: a scene, a moment, a page
- Create an illustration based on that fragment
- Style: as if it were a comic or graphic novel page
- Black and white. Dark. Gritty.
I didn't want pretty art. I didn't want something stylized or commercial. I wanted something that conveyed the weight of the words. Something visceral.
I received proposals. Some didn't understand the tone. Others stayed on the surface. But there was one that captured exactly what I was looking for.
Gemma read the diary. She understood it. And her illustration not only captured the visual style I was looking for, but conveyed the emotional weight of the original text.
Now the real work begins. The first pages. The first sketches that will turn this diary into a graphic novel.
The Pages
Page 1 — Why I write
February 1, 2026
The first page sets the tone for the entire work. An intimate reflection on the act of writing as a form of resistance.
Page 2 — The dead city
February 21, 2026
Chernogorsk, a city that looks like an old photograph. Buildings like open tombs and streets turned into cracks.
Page 3 — The shelter
March 15, 2026
The windowless room, the fuselage embedded in the facade, and the certainty that nothing falls completely.
Page 4 — Inventory
May 8, 2026
A count of weapons, provisions, and the clock that keeps measuring time despite everything.
Page 1 — Why I write
February 1, 2026
"I don't really know why I write."
The first page sets the tone for the entire work. An intimate reflection on the act of writing as a form of resistance. The protagonist wonders why he needs to leave a record of his existence, why he feels the urgency not to become just another nameless body that ends up blending with the dust.
The urban landscape—skyscrapers, elevated highways, structures rising toward an empty sky—contrasts with the intimacy of the act of writing. A hand holds a pen over an open notebook. A solitary figure watches the city from somewhere high above.
"Writing gives me a shape, however minimal. It reminds me that I still think, that I can observe and record, that I'm still someone and not just a body breathing out of habit."
Page 2 — The dead city
February 21, 2026
"The air up here is thick and gray. It has that smell of dust and metal that sticks in your throat."
The second page immerses us in Chernogorsk, a city that looks like an old photograph. From the rooftop, the protagonist contemplates a devastated urban landscape: buildings that look like open tombs, streets turned into cracks where memory escapes.
The illustrations capture the desolation with expressive strokes: thick smoke rising between crumbling skyscrapers, silhouettes of buildings against a threatening sky, and in the lower panel, a solitary figure watching the sea from the ruins.
"On clear days you can see the sea, though it no longer has color or reflection, just a thick movement that smells of rusted iron."
Page 3 — The shelter
March 15, 2026
"Sometimes I think the sea rots just like us."
I live on the highest floor of a building that a plane crashed into when everything went to hell. The fuselage got embedded in the facade, as if a giant hand had pushed it until it fit. It's an absurd image, but I've grown used to it.
In the first days, it unsettled me to think it could fall at any moment, crushing everything and burying me with the rest. Now it's part of the landscape, like a rusted rib that holds up my shelter.
"Here nothing falls completely; everything is held up by pure exhaustion."
My shelter is a room without windows, with a thin mattress and a blanket that barely warms. I sleep next to my weapons because it makes me feel less vulnerable. Though I know that, when the time comes, nothing will help much.
Page 4 — Inventory
May 8, 2026
"A Colt with eight rounds. A scoped rifle that still holds steady. A bizon that's too heavy for quick movement."
Two cans of tuna. A jar of honey I open only on the worst nights. Bandages. A short length of rope. My boots are finished. I've repaired them so many times I no longer know which parts are original.
From here, I can see the clock tower. It still chimes sometimes. I don't understand why. The mechanism should have failed years ago.
"Each bell reminds me that time keeps measuring something, even when no one is left to care what it measures. I like to think it doesn't mark hours. It marks endurance."
In that sense, it represents me.
What comes next?
I'll be documenting progress here. Every advance, every finished page, every creative decision. This will be the record of how a survival diary transforms into art.
* The podcast is only available in Spanish