Synkroniciti is stoked to welcome Argentine illustrator Rodo Buscaglia and New York writer Patrick McEvoy with “The Locked Room,” a taut, hard‑boiled comic strip steeped in classic noir atmosphere.
“Heard of the locked room scenario, right? Murder happens, people locked in a room, big mystery.”
Here, the mystery detonates fast. A murdered gangster lies cooling on the floor while a trio of toughs—our narrator among them—aim guns at one another. Add the gangster’s volatile girlfriend and the tension spikes into something volatile, kinetic, and strangely inevitable.
Rodo’s visuals swirl and tilt, giving us vantage points that feel unstable, almost predatory: looking down from the ceiling, up from the floor, or at off‑kilter angles that shift from wide shots across the room to tight close‑ups of a character’s face. Patrick’s dialogue matches that energy with terse, bristling lingo that drops us straight into the underworld. Each frame tightens the puzzle. Our narrator is running out of time, and that urgency draws us into his world like flies to light.
View “The Locked Room” in Synkroniciti’s Expectations issue, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Rodo Buscaglia has always loved comics. He studied with Argentine comic artists such as Oswal and the Villagrán Studio. He has been working as a freelancer for two decades.
Walking the streets. On the train. Eating. In the shower. Sleeping. Possibly even listening or watching others (though keep that between us). Patrick McEvoy has been inspired by the creative muse in many different places that have led to stories & art being brought into the world. He has had illustrated stories appear in Variety Pack, Shift, Santa Fe Review, The Fantastic Other, Best of Penumbric Vol. 6 & 8 and elsewhere, including having three works included in TAG Gallery Los Angeles’ Made in USA exhibit. “Um” has been included in Best of Metastellar Vol. 4. Photography has appeared in galleries and journals while he also has written and directed short plays for various short play festivals in NYC.