Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar is an urban fantasy about an interdimensional punk rock unicorn

Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar interior art — (Image credit: Top Shelf)

What do you get when an interdimensional unicorn girl undergoes a life-changing crisis that sends her back to her normal office job, away from her dreams of stardom?

You get Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar, the debut full-length graphic novel from "cartoonist, musician, and educator" Kevin Alvir, coming in September from Top Shelf Comics.

Alvir, known for his cartooning in publications such as Funny or Die, Blackbook, Brooklyn Mag, Edible, and The Neu Jorker, and for his musicianship on albums from Gabe Liedman, Nicole Yun, Essex Green, Holy Tunics, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and more, will write and draw a series of OGNs for Top Shelf, starting with the improbably named Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar.

"In Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar, a sweet unicorn girl from another dimension moves to Earth City hoping to make a name for herself as a folk singer…but her very first open mic is a disaster, leaving her with a bionic arm and an identity crisis," reads Top Shelf's official description of Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar.

"Now she’s starting a crummy office job, her parents back in their home dimension are laying on the guilt trip, and the cool girl at the record store leaves her tongue-tied," it continues. "But once she’s drawn into a knock-down, drag-out encounter with a gang of hamburger-headed goons from the sinister megacorporation Beef is Burger, Lisa must rally a ragtag band of supernatural hipsters, conspiracy freaks, and burnt-out office coworkers to thwart their diabolical ambitions!"

As wild as the sci-fi fueled premise sounds, at its heart, Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar aims at a level of relatability for Gen-Z readers, according to Top Shelf's release.

"With explosive energy and a razor-sharp edge, Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar skewers everything from youth culture trends to corporate capitalism, capturing the restless spirit of Generation Z just as Scott Pilgrim and Rick and Morty did for millennials," it states.

"This off-beat urban fantasy is a bombastic celebration of rough-hewn vintage superhero aesthetics, zine-punk audacity, crusty lo-fi passion, and the power of a perfect pork bun."

"You’ve heard of ‘quiet quitting’? Well, Lisa Cheese is as loud as it gets," says Top Shelf editor Leigh Walton. "Kevin Alvir grabs a fistful of all the frustration and joy of being young and broke in the big city, dunks it in the radioactive ooze of Steve Ditko and Gary Panter, and comes out swinging with an unstoppable cyborg punch."

Lisa Cheese and the Ghost Guitar goes on sale in September.

I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and general comic book historian since 2011, and now I'm the Entertainment Writer at GamesRadar+. I've also been the on-site reporter at most major comic conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, and C2E2. Outside of comic journalism, I am the artist of many weird pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)