The Set Up

“A ringside seat at a heavyweight bout is what is offered by Mr. March in this astonishing narrative… episodes that make the blood boil, and the hair rise…tragic pathos so deep as almost to defeat any faith in man.” –New York Times Book Review, upon original 1928 publication

Joseph Moncure March (1899–1977) was the first managing editor of The New Yorker, and helped create the magazine’s Talk of the Town front section. After leaving the magazine, March wrote the first of his two important Jazz Age narrative poems, The Wild Party. In 1928 he followed it with The Set-up. Moving to Hollywood in 1929 he became the scriptwriter who turned the silent version of Howard Hughes’ classic Hell’s Angels into a talkie a rewrite that brought the phrase ‘Excuse me while I put on something more comfortable’ into the American lexicon. A screenwriter in Hollywood until 1940, March eventually became a writer of documentaries for the State Department and a feature writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Erik Kriek is an award-winning illustrator, designer, and comic artist from Amsterdam. He is best known for his Gutsman comics, for which he won the Dutch award Stripschaprijis in 2008. In 2012 he published From Beyond and Other Tales, his collection of graphic reworkings of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. Among his influences are US artists such as Daniel Clowes, Will Eisner, Charles Burns and Chris Ware, as well as the classic 1940s horror comics of E.C. Comics by artists such as Wallace Wood. He has also expressed admiration for Dutch artists including Peter Pontiac, Typex and Peter van Dongen. He lives in the Netherlands with his girlfriend and son.