David McKean & Neil Gaiman's Signal to Noise

David McKean & Neil Gaiman's Signal To Noise 

Signal To Noise follows the middle-aged film director as he discovers and deals with late stage cancer while working on a script about the 999AD apocalypse that wasn't.  The narrative shifts between him and the lives of the midevil villagers of his script he is writing for and audience of one.  Appropriately Signal To Noise is short on resolution.  The story does throw the reader into the division of between the intended and received work of of art.

Signal To Noise came out in the early nineties.  I came across it latter in decade back before I started smoking when I was still visiting comic book stores weekly.  I think of it as part of trilogy falling in between Violent Cases and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. At 48 to 96 pages, all three are relatively short for bound American collection but long for stapled comic books.  They are much closer to Bandes Dessinées format. 

The McKean's artwork in all three is unreal.  It is closer to mix media and collage work he did for covers for comic books and CDs.  But the simple but elegant line work he used in Cages occasionally peaks trough.  His color pallet creates a depth to the page without overwhelming the narrative flow.

I ended up putting this review off until the last minute I hope to come back to these three books.  I had planed to review another book from Top Shelf but couldn't get a hold of it.  I picked a copy of Signal to Noise one off my book case I think I lent Violent Cases out.  Dark Horse has released a a new edition that appears to have some interesting bonus material.  I hope to get a weak or two ahead over the next few days as a way taking my mind over the withdraw.

David McKean's Cages

Cages centers on a apartment populated with a jazz musician, a novelist and a painter. In orbit of the building is a cat, a cray man, a homeless man and a Demiurge. The ten issue arch is both tribute and performance of the trials and rewards of the creative process.

Cages, like McCloud's Understanding Comics and Moore/Campbell's From Hell, is alumni Tundra Publishing. It shares in, and is partly responsible for, the mystique of excellence around that short lived publishing house. Cages is still a contender for being the high watermark of art house comics even after being in print for almost a generation. While it isn't a breeze read I found it flowed pretty smoothly once I committed to sitting down and giving it my full attention. It can be challenging but it never sacrifices the simple joy of storytelling for its well deserved reputation as a avant-garde comic book narrative.

McCloud lays out his theory of the 'four tribes' in the third essay of chapter six of Making Comics.  Here is a short article from The Guardian on the subject. I want to focus on the relationship between Animists and Formalists which from the less subjective of his two sets of opposed artistic preference among the comic book community. Jeff Smith and (early) Jack Kirby are excellent examples of Animist. Their mastery of form and style intentionally and seamlessly obscures itself in their devotion to story and content. McCloud singles out Cages as the perfect example of the junction between the Formalist and Classicist tribes.

The juxtaposition between the preferences of the Animists that use the techniques of comic book composition to tell a story by concealing those techniques and what McKean offers us is telling. Mckean shows off his skills in his composition and editorial decisions. He weds the artistic showiness of his form to content as his story pulls the reader deeper and deeper into the drama of the creative lives of characters.

Cages has been in and out of print and shifted publishers 4 times. Currently Dark Horse is keeping it in print and has a well-priced paper back edition. His web-site isn't live yet, but its going to be gorgeous.