By Cathy Malkasian (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-638-6
There are a lot of graphic novels out there these days, and even the most in-tune fan or dedicated aficionado just can’t read everything new being published – and that’s not even counting the historical wealth of already published material that’s been released since the dawn of trade paperbacks and comics albums at the end of the 1970s.
A perfect case in point is Percy Gloom by Cathy Malkasian which was released in 2007 and which I completely missed. However, as soon as I read my review copy of the sequel Wake Up, Percy Gloom – the subject of today’s rave review – I realised what an utter joy I had missed and determined to track a copy down.
Whilst that’s happening however, let’s look at one of the best comics fantasy books I’ve read in all my many years…
Someplace, sometime far stranger than here or now, an innocuous little man who loved helping people lost his wife and left his ordered, simple life.
Actually it wasn’t that simple: although Percy is meek and gentle and desperately keen to help everybody, his lazy-eye and enormous head – which lights up when he’s happy – often creates false impressions amongst people who are at best rude and often just plain mean.
He’s also had some rather distressing news recently.
His Mum revealed to him that he is, like her, immortal but prone to naps which can take anything from months to decades. It’s why everything always seems so different every time he wakes up in the “morningâ€â€¦
After his last kip he found true affection with Margaret, whom he met at his new job in a failing company…
Now we find them enjoying a sailboat ride as she searches for her long-lost twin. Percy has never been happier. As they reach a new land however Margaret realises her search is nearly over and, as she realises her growing affection for Percy, her extremely contented companion begins to feel very sleepy…
Percy’s mum is even more unique than her son. She has been alive for millennia and spends her maternal days shepherding humanity; devising devices and inventing awesome, clever things, such as the barrel which always collected her slumbering son wherever he’s dropped off and safely storing him until he awakes again.
Unfortunately one of her previous diversions – a joke-book – has become, over the last five centuries, the World’s Holy Book: an unshakable, adamant and infallible guide to living and the eternal Rewards Beyond, utterly believed as gospel by the short-lived, unquestioning and remarkably po-faced people.
Sadly the gag most misunderstood by the ardent the worshippers was the 29th Prophecy which said that after 182,515 days – just after tea-time – Voatzle would drop from the sky and land on The Good and The Lucky. By every cleric’s calculations that’s tomorrow afternoon…
Appalled at the people’s literal-mindedness, Mum has been busily building the Paradise the self-deluded worshippers are expecting and – now that she’s almost finished – is delighted to learn that Percy is waking up. Dispatching his barrel to a location that will appear familiar to her drowsy boy, Mum then pops off to meet her current beau Horace – a quiet and contemplative grandfather and extremely ingenious gardener/topiarist who knows her as dear old Clara…
Whilst ensuring Percy’s safe awakening, Clara reveals her true nature to Horace and discloses the cheese-based disguise secrets which have enabled her to maintain the imposture of aging, blithely unaware that there has been a little hitch…
When Percy succumbed to slumber he was with his adored Margaret but now, as he languorously comes to on a lovely moonlit night, he has no idea that only a year has passed. The counting device in his barrel has malfunctioned and one year has become 200…
Still groggy and heartbroken that his Margaret has long gone, Percy sets off across this odd land to find his mum; once again an innocuous, naively innocent wanderer in a very bizarre place and time. He has no idea that it’s only this odd because the all those true believers are excited that Voatzle is finally coming and are absorbed in performing their final rites and rituals…
As he progresses Percy meets and takes charge of the brusquely tragic Mr. Tetzel who accidentally locked himself out of his very small country and now must travel right around the world in a straight line to get back to the front door again. Not far away the morose Margaret has been deeply heartened by finally rendezvousing with sister Lily, who in turn will introduce her to Percy’s extended family too…
You meet a lot of people and make many friends if you live forever – including, it would seem, other immortals – and as Mum introduces Horace to her own affably eternal inner circle – and the talking goats – Percy’s peregrinations have also resulted in a few shocks.
Although a native, the closeted Mr. Tetzel is an even stranger Stranger in a StrangeLand and his shocking manners require all Percy’s tact and forbearance to keep them from harm. Despite his selfish and cavalier attitude, the brusque banished martinet is all too human and secretly endures his own tragically lost love. However that small glimpse of common humanity is quickly quashed when a committee of Voatzle priests and prelates mistake the obnoxious official for the Dimpled Ambassador – Last Prophet of Voatzle. Moreover the deluded Tetzel believes it too…
Happily though, that clash with the inevitably outraged Holy zealots gives Percy his first clue of exactly how little time has actually passed and puts him on the path to a gloriously reunion with his much-missed Margaret…
Cathy Malkasian is another brilliant (and multi-award winning) animator who has seamlessly segued into graphic narrative and turned the medium on its head. You’ll have seen her screen work as designer, storyboarder and/or director on such features as Curious George, The Wild Thornberrys Movie, As Told by Ginger, Psyko Ferret, Stressed Eric, Rugrats, Jumanji, Duckman and elsewhere. Perhaps you’ve seen her aforementioned Percy Gloom debut or Temperance graphic novels. She is currently occupied creating the animatic series Hiding in Happytown on YouTube.
Her latest surreal and intoxicatingly-rendered fable manages the almost impossible trick of being simultaneously sad and eerie, funny and thrilling, astonishingly mature and ingenuously innocent and childlike, resulting in a brilliant, enthralling, evocative and wryly uplifting fable of loss and reunion in a fantastical realm as overwhelmingly convincing and real as Oz, Narnia or Alice’s Looking Glass Land.
If you crave the acme of comics storytelling, you must read this fabulous yarn.
© 2013 Cathy Malkasian. All rights reserved.