By Hans Rickheit (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-646-1 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1606993019 (HB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in for dramatic effect.
Hans Rickheit was born in 1973 and has been producing skilfully crafted art in different arenas since the 1990s, beginning with self-published minicomics before graduating to full-sized, full-length epics such as Kill, Kill, Kill or The Gloaming. He has also worked in film, music, gallery works and performance art.
A Xeric award beneficiary, he came to broader attention in 2001 with controversial graphic novel Chloe, and has since spread himself wide contributing to numerous anthologies and periodicals such as The Stranger, creating webcomics and instigating the occasional anthology periodical Chrome Fetus.
An avid student observer of dreams, Rickheit has been called obscurantist, and indeed in all his beautifully rendered and realised concoctions meaning is layered, structured and open to wide interpretation. His most approachable and possibly preferred oeuvre is the recondite imagery and sturdily fanciful milieu of Victorian/Edwardian Americana which proved such rich earth for fantasists such as Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, whilst his fine, studied, meticulously clear line is a perfect, incisive counterpoint to the cloud of miasmic mystery and cosmic confusion engendered by the protagonists of his most successful book.
Brothers Edmund and William Torpor abide in an abode in a secluded 19th century New England town but they have never been part of their community. Raised alone by their artist mother, they are quite different from other children, with Edmund especially obsessed with arcane engineering and the assemblage of one-of-a-kind musical instruments from utterly inappropriate components.
Fantastic dream-like journeys and progressions mark their isolated existence, which is far more in tune with a greater metaphysical cosmos, but as puberty gradually moves them to an awareness of base human sexuality, they find the outside world impacting their private one in ways which can only end in tragedy and horror…
Moreover, just where exactly did the plans for the ghastly Squirrel Machine come from¦?
Visually reminiscent of Rick Geary at his most beguiling, this is nevertheless a singularly surreal and mannered design; a highly charged, subtly disturbing delusion that will chill and upset and possibly even outrage many readers.
It is also compelling, seductive, sublimely quirky and nigh-impossible to forget. As long as you’re an adult and braced for the unexpected, expect this to be one of the best books you’ll read this century – or any other…
Out of print for decades, The Squirrel Machine has now been remastered and released in an accessible paperback edition, as well as that futuristic digital doings, just in time to disturb the sleep of a new generation of fear fans just as the winter nights draw in…
© 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Contents © 2009 Hans Rickheit. All Rights Reserved.
Today in 1991 Abbie an’Slats illustrator Raeburn van Buren was born; he shares the day with Ted (Metropol) McKeever, Joe (Daredevil) Quesada, Kala (Girl Genius) Foglio, Hans (The Squirrel Machine, Cochlea & Eustachia, Delia, Chloe) Rickheit and, I’m sure, many others.
However in 2001 we lost Italian mega maven Gian Luigi Bonelli, the man who gave the world Tex Willer.