THE FORSAKENS is a series of episodic novellas with text by John Jahnke, illustrated and designed by Alessandro Magania.  Published online, the stories follow the exploits of two spoiled canines - the Forsakens of the title - suddenly facing hardship, on a world traveling adventure in pursuit of their owner, a mysterious art curator, who has seemingly abandoned them. Deploying the format and style of early 20th century picture-novels for young adults, The Forsakens explores the cross-cultural paradoxes and financial discrepancies of our modern world in a tone that is sardonically old-fashioned. The illustrations are principally manual, and are drawn, sketched and painted on a multitude of papers and materials, allowing the digital transposal of their textures to create its own incongruence, contributing to the final aesthetic. Likewise the narration plays with a type of language uncommon to modern texts, with its baroque flair and flourishes, juxtaposing the absolute contemporaneity of the stories with a deceivingly nostalgic tone. As the stories progress the plot splits genres: from romance to mystery to didactic tale gone wrong.