By Charles Burns
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 978-0-224-09041-4
If you know Charles Burns work, in particularly the magnificent Black Hole, then this is a bit of a treat. Full colour, beautifully presented, and with all the quirks and darkly mysterious goings on you'd hope for, this is a wonderful piece of work. There's a strong European comics influence to this book, from the Tintin inspired imagery to the graphic album it's presented as (the first in a series we're told).
Doug, the hero of the piece, is in a bad way, and when the story opens we're in one of his fevered dreams where he looks uncannily like Tintin's long-lost brother and the world around him is a twisted, broken place. What follows are two parallel stories, where he get to discover the weird world of Doug's dream-state and also the dysfunctional, distracted and somewhat dismal existence of his waking-self.
To be fair, at this early stage it doesn't make a tremendous lot of sense and feels dreadfully too short, but it's important to remember that the story is setting the groundwork and the mysteries for the volumes to come, so on that score it's an intriguing and beguiling journey into two uncertain worlds. I loved it, and I think it's fair to say that with Burns' track record it's going to be a trip worth taking.
And if you liked that: Pick up Black Hole if you've not already done so
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