And that’s it somehow: this is a book that makes you feel small again. The belief that impossible monsters might come and hurt you. Punch for the first time, I recall falling back to a childish state.
I can’t help but be nostalgic when talking about this - fifteen years ago or so, while reading Mr. Even if you buy this book just for the art, it is worth it. What McKean does with his photography and illustration is just flat out brilliant and his ability to create a sense of place and time within something as simple as a blurry photograph is incredible. I’m not sure if he created all of the puppets used in this book himself or found them somewhere else, but they are worthy of a special mention here as each works perfectly for its part, and each is horrifying in its own right. It is such a moody, evocative delight every time I lay my eyes on his work. If you are unfamiliar with him, Dave McKean loves to mix media in his art and that is on full display here. The real hero of this graphic novel is the art. He finds that horror can be twisted to humor, and the things that make some people laugh are truly chilling, especially seen through the eyes of a child. His time with his grandparents is the boy’s crucible, and this story is his adult mind narrating and trying to make sense of his memories. The local Punch and Judy Man, who puts on grotesque puppet plays for children, becomes a touchstone for the boy and the puppeteer’s stage holds strange and terrifying mysteries, which subtextually explore how we view life when afflicted with the temporary, but painful, condition of pre-adolescence. Punch follows an eight-year-old boy spending a couple of weeks banging around his grandfather’s seaside arcade in the bygone days of some unrevealed year (the 50s or 60s if I had to guess).
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