Set in the poor outskirts of Santiago, Viviana follows a young woman whose already difficult life is suddenly thrown into uncertainty. Driven from her family home by an alcoholic father, Viviana finds herself alone in a city where poverty, violence and sexual exploitation are constant threats. Her boyfriend Miguel is one of the few people offering her companionship, and the story develops over the course of a single night as the couple move through a hostile urban landscape. Encounters with men who regard Viviana as vulnerable and available gradually expose the precarious position in which she finds herself.

The story is less a conventional romance than a dark coming-of-age journey. Viviana’s experiences force her to confront adult sexuality under circumstances she has little control over, while Miguel struggles to protect her and to understand what is happening to their relationship. The result is one of Harrison’s more sombre narratives, combining eroticism with poverty, danger and emotional vulnerability. It was his first work intended specifically for European publication.

Viviana was first published by La Cúpula in Spanish in black and white, under Harrison’s McFrahap pseudonym. In 1993 it was reissued by La Cúpula in their Colección X #58, under the Ferocius pseudonym, in black and sepia for the first part and colour for the ending, a format which was translated into French by CAP in their Bédé Adult series, and reissued by Dynamite in 2020. We include here the first twenty pages of the original version.