Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020
by Mirko Ilić
Foreword by: Steven Heller Afterword by: Dave McKean
Hardback / 152pp / Colour / ISBN: 978-1-914224-52-2
Price: UK £19.99 / US $26.99 / CAN $37
UK pub date: 3 September 2026; US pub date: 29 September 2026
A collection of wordless single-page visual essays inspired by Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Winsor McCay and others to reflect the anxieties, uncertainties, and daily observations of award-winning artist and designer Mirko Ilić.
In 2020, New York-based artist and designer Mirko Ilić started drawing self-contained single-page stories created to reflect the mood of an unprecedented time. He called this collection “After Covid 2020” or “A.C. 2020”.
Ilić continued to create these visual essays even as the lockdowns slowly lifted, channelling his anxieties and observations into striking and surreal images that combine personal imagination with motifs and inspiration from music, fine art, comics, and more.
Shocking and provocative, captivating and meditative, this sequence of illustrations paints a unique picture of a man’s inner turmoil amidst a crumbling world. Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 is a testament to both a period of unprecedented upheaval and the stunning talent of its award-winning author.
Author Biography
Mirko Ilić is a Bosnian-born comics artist and graphic designer based in New York. He spent his formative years as a youth in Yugoslavia during the Communist-bloc era, where he became known for his early illustrations for comic books and magazines. His comics were then published internationally in Heavy Metal, Metal Hurlant, and Marvel’s Epic Illustrated, among others. Soon after he moved to the United States, he became the art director of Time magazine‘s international edition and The New York Times’ op-ed pages.
Throughout his illustrious career, Ilić has collaborated with design luminaries such as Steven Heller and Milton Glaser including on Milton Glaser: POP (The Monacelli Press, 2023). He has designed album covers for Rage Against the Machine, and created film titles for You’ve Got Mail. His works (including some of his comics) are in the collections of the MOMA, the SFMOMA, the Smithsonian, Die Nueue Sammlung, and many other global institutions. His biography Mirko Ilić: Fist to Face by Dejan Kršić was published in 2012 (PRINT). Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 (SelfMadeHero, 2026) signals his return to the visual medium he loves: comics.
About SelfMadeHero
SelfMadeHero aim to publish ground-breaking and beautiful work by authors and artists from across the globe, from the quirky and humorous to the political and profound. We are proud to bring readers graphic novels and visual narratives that provoke, entertain, inspire, and inform. Releases for Spring 2026 include: Barbara Yelin’s Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory, ILYA’s Romo the WolfBoy, Joann Sfar’s The Little Prince, Kay Medaglia’s Comic Therapy: Meditations for Reflection, Myfanwy Tristram’s Noisy Valley: The Art of Protest, Ivo van Woerden, Gemma Plum and Marloes Dekkers’ The Great Marc Evers,Mirko Ilić’s Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020, Bryan and Mary Talbot’s Lo! An Amazon!, and Simon Elliott’s Chagall.
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