First in a five-issue miniseries, this new book from Ted McKeever and Shadowline starts with a dead cat and gets stranger from there. If you need a dose of the surreal this week, you know where to go.
Written and Illustrated by Ted McKeever
Devil on one shoulder – angel on the other. One tells you to do bad things, the other . . . well, you get the idea. Bad news for a recovering alcoholic if the “good” one is MIA. Between a liquor-gulping demon and a mummified cat hell-bent on mucking up his fragile stability with esoteric trappings of Egyptian Gods, it’s all about to make our hero’s day hit the proverbial fan.
Chomsky, a recovering alcoholic with a vague resemblance to Tom Waits, has just come to the end of what looks like a self-imposed detox in an abandoned motel. Bleary but mostly sane, he heads back out into the world – and is going to have one heck of a day, if the talking dead cat that starts it off is any indication. Meanwhile, somewhere else in the nondescript town, a fervent preacher encounters the title phenomenon, sentient and running around, and he has strong feelings about the matter.
The meandering, half-poetic, half-punning dialogue gives us a wonderful portrait into Chomksy’s mind straightaway. Often a speech bubble will only give us part of a line before budding off into another one that sort of, vaguely, concludes the thought, and it’s a great method of getting across Chomsky’s fractured mental state. Along the way, McKeever’s unique lettering style – analogous to handwriting, and messy, in a controlled way – contributes to the overall off-kilter feel.
Interestingly, Chomsky as a character is already somewhat more complex than his situation, and as he has something of a conversation the (oddly sassy) corpse of a cat, his particular personality comes across as well. There’s a neat little sense of humour there (he even jokes that the proverbial angel on his shoulder is off getting drunk) and while he’s still a pretty shifty main character to have, it’s not difficult to get on his side either.
The preacher’s part of the story doesn’t really last long enough to get a real handle on, but it’s certainly surreal enough to beg some questions, and so acts as our hook into the next issue. Plotwise, it’s hard to see at the moment if and how Chomsky’s troubles and this encounter are connected, but then, given the emphasis on Chomsky lacking an angel on his shoulder… we can make reasonable assumptions. And who doesn’t look forward to reading that comic?
McKeever’s art, meanwhile, is somehow both stark and lush, presenting a vivid black-and-white world replete with detail but also a good deal of white space. What stands out the most are the faces: weathered and textured within an inch of their lives, they come across like the most well-remembered elements of a nightmare. But there’s plenty more strangeness where that came from: oddly haunted-looking corner stores, a toothy, hard-drinking demon, and then that talking, mummified cat, shape-shifting from panel to panel but always utterly disturbing. So far as hallucinations go, the more unusual things that Chomsky encounters sure have a grounded feel to them, and this adds a unique sort of tension to the story. In the end, what’s more dangerous: Chomsky’s own demons or the real world he has to confront? And where does one end and the other begin?
In the end, there’s a touch of the self-consciously edgy going on here, and the too-weird-for-words plotline isn’t going to win everybody over. Still, this is an odd concept beautifully executed, and McKeever is likely to win some new fans with this thoroughly gritty fable. It’ll be worth sticking around to see just how weird this gets.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy
