From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Kim Jung Gi
For the novel's other visual contributor, see Kate Nastas. For discussions of visual style across adaptations, see Flight imagery across adaptations.
Kim Jung Gi (1975–2022) was a South Korean visual artist and illustrator renowned for his intricate, improvised pen-and-ink compositions. Gi drew the cover art (signed 2018) for C. W. Smith's novel A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight, published by Abrachas Publishing in 2020.
Cover artwork
The cover is a black-and-white pen-and-ink drawing, rendered in Gi's characteristic dense, fluid linework over a light wash. It depicts both protagonists at rest in a sun-dappled suburban yard — palm trees, a low timber deck, parked cars, and a figure resting in the background. Katita sits on a stool, leaning slightly toward her companion, her bastardised samurai sword held point-down at her side. Beside her, Leif sits in his wheelchair, with its large spoked wheels, bearded, a bandage across his brow, wearing the floral Hawaiian shirt that recurs throughout the story. Rather than an action scene, the drawing catches a quiet moment between the violence — the two of them simply sitting in the afternoon light.
The image originates in a commission described within the novel itself: the narrator sends a photograph of his wife to Gi, who draws her as Katita and him as Leif. It is the source from which the franchise's visual sense of the pair derives.
Kate Nastas provided the novel's end illustration.
Influence
The cover has become the definitive visual template for the pair's appearance — both Katita's and Leif's — across subsequent adaptations. The manga adaptation credits Gi's work directly; the anime uses a stylized variation that foregrounds similar architectural/geometric patterning.
Gi has not publicly commented on the Beach Surgery franchise beyond the cover commission. [citation needed]