The Cat with a Really Big Head


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-287-4

Roman Dirge is the multi-award winning, creatively twisted auteur behind the gloriously gruesome and deliriously disquieting Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl, but like quicksand and unpronounceable foreign cheese he also has a hidden, softer side.

Collected in this haunting hardback compilation are a brace of the mordant maestro’s lesser known works – as well as a bonus short vignette – all deviously masquerading as innocuously innocent if lavishly lurid illustrated fables and poems which nice kids might enjoy…

Eponymous tale of domestic tragedy and karmic comeuppance ‘The Cat with a Really Big Head’ was first released by Slave Labor Graphics in 2002 and details with charming indulgence the story of a poor macrocephalic kitty whose life is ruined by an awesome overabundance of cranium. You’d think that having eight more might be some comfort but you’d be wrong…

Following that there’s a brief doggerel divertissement as ‘A Big Question’ rhythmically relates what happened to little Alisa McGee after she asked the Autopsy Man what he was doing with her cadaver…

As revealed in Dirge’s Foreword, the agonised aftermath of a romantic break-up inspired ‘The Monsters in my Tummy’, originally seen as a black-&-white Slave Labor special in 1999.

Now remastered into resplendent rainbow hues, the grisly treatise on one man’s internal logistics and gory grieving process offers a certain sort of hope and lots of vicarious spleen for the newly heart-sore who still retain a smidgen of poesy and particles of a sense of humour…

Wittily weird, excessively eccentric and darkly hilarious, these fanciful fairytales for gloomy grownups readily blend whimsical charm with surreal introspection to create visual mood music and gothy glee for the down-at-soul; rekindling the mordant merriment of Charles Addams’ cartoons and so readily revived by modern macabrists such as Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez (Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac), Ted Naifeh & Serena (Gloom Cookie) and Jill “Scary Godmother” Thompson.

These fearsomely funny fables are an unwholesome treat for those kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker and less anodyne flavours of life and its inevitable final consequences.

Ever so much better for you than alcohol abuse, suicide pacts or stalking that certain someone in all weathers…
The Cat with a Really Big Head and The Monsters in My Tummy ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

The Cat with a Really Big Head will be released on June 30th 2015 and is available for pre-order now.