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\nBy Neil Gaiman<\/b> & Dave McKean<\/b> (Escape Books)
\nISBN: 978-0-9509568-6-2<\/p>\n
\nBy Neil Gaiman<\/b> & Dave McKean<\/b> (Escape Books)
\nISBN: 978-0-9509568-6-2<\/p>\n
As this entire book is all about stories, memories, perception and self-deception, I’m concentrating on the original Escape Books release, although the tale has been re-issued a number of times. Moreover, difficult sod that I am, even though the artwork was created in a muted tonal colour-palette of blues, greys and browns, which were restored for those subsequent releases, I actually prefer the black and white version I first saw, so I’m going with that one rather than later, corrected as-the-artist-intended versions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
There’s actually very little to say about this enigmatic and compelling little teaser other than the basic facts.<\/p>\n
Initially published by the aforementioned and sorely missed Escape outfit in 1987, it marks the first collaboration of two relatively unknown creators who shared a more literary aspiration for comics than traditional newcomers to the craft, married to a novel approach and genuine, raw, hungry storytelling talent.<\/p>\n
It’s short, sweet, disturbing, utterly absorbing and probably impossible to translate into any other medium\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and that is, of course, a Very Good Thing.<\/p>\n
There’s this guy see, and he’s reminiscing about his childhood in the 1960s\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Years ago in Portsmouth a little lad hurt his arm rather badly whilst exchanging words about bedtime with his father. To fix the problem daddy took the 4-year old to see an osteopath. The elderly gentleman was an interesting fellow with an accent who told great yarns and mentioned that he had once treated somebody famous\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
As the narrator tries to sort out the half-forgotten details – fragments of life and films and games congealed now with clearly conflated circumstances – the facts, fictions and shadily obscured misunderstandings concerning his difficult childhood, growing maturity and awareness and those hours with Al Capone’s bone-bender begin to emerge and coalesce\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or do they?<\/p>\n
Flickering back and forth, the narrative proffers a miasma of mixed memories and misapprehensions involving a memorably troubled old man, Men in Dark Suits, a party, a magician, unexplained appearances and subsequent disappearances, unforgettable physical discomfort as a young arm was coaxed back into correctitude, tales of tailors and gangsters and Tommy Guns\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 which were always carried in Violent Cases\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Most of all it deals with unsolvable mysteries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c because even the things we recall, we don’t always remember\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Complete with an Alan Moore Introduction<\/i>, this slight but unforgettable pictorial memento mori – or is that topica tragoedia? – beguiles and enchants and subtly distresses in ways no lover of the comics medium could possibly resist.<\/p>\n
If you haven’t read it, you must. If you have, read it again \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it’s not at all what you remember\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1987 Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean (Escape Books) ISBN: 978-0-9509568-6-2 As this entire book is all about stories, memories, perception and self-deception, I’m concentrating on the original Escape Books release, although the tale has been re-issued a number of times. Moreover, difficult sod that I am, even though the artwork was created in a muted … <\/p>\n