Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: Dave McKean
Publisher: Dark Horse
This one has been around a bit! Kicking off as a black-and-white graphic novel from Escape (& Titan Books) in 1987, it made a colour appearance via Tundra four years later. A 10th anniversary edition courtesy of Kitchen Sink followed, and now we have the sixteenth anniversary edition thanks to Dark Horse. I still have the original on my bookshelf from those halcyon days at the end of the '80s - it's ragged, falling apart...baggy, and a bit loose at the seams. Even when published it was none too pretty, but this is the 21st Century, and Dark Horse's production people have done a bang-up job pulling this one together: gatefold, thick-card-stock covers; hard-wearing, glossy, quality interior pages; and crystal-clear printing...it's a joy to behold ... and hold.
With the exception of a new afterword from Gaiman (ruminating on the passage of time both in the book and in his life since it was first published), the contents themselves haven't changed since that first colour printing (which dropped the original Alan Moore introduction from the first edition, I believe). "Violent Cases" are the cases gangsters carry their Tommy guns in, and this is the story of Gaiman as narrator telling of the time he, as a four-year-old, met Al Capone's osteopath, in Portsmouth, England. You might ask what this guy is doing in Portsmouth, and we find out by the end of the book...it's not laid out completely on the carpet for you; you have to interpret these events seen by a kid with an adult's perspective to 'get' it. Even at the very start of his comics career, Gaiman was stretching his audience.
Dave McKean's art is typical McKean - surreal, impressionistic and maybe even obscure in places, fantastic and mind-blowing in others, Never less than genius at work.
This book has lost nothing for being 16 years old, and only loses a solitary mark because it's a little slight compared to his other works - 44 pages or so of story. If you haven't got it already, it's time to buy - if you have, how about an upgrade to the latest version?
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