Martin Vaughn-James' THE CAGE

Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

Originally published in 1975 this graphic novel transports the reader to a disorienting realm where words and pictures seem to tell astory about something - a cage - that was never completed. The story is told from multiple time frames and physical perspectives.

The imagery is simultaneously disturbing and ordinary. The text fragments that accompany the pictures seem to make some kind of sense but what that sense might be will be different for everyone who “reads” the book.

I put quotes around “reads” since the book combines text and black-and-white line drawings so as to resemble a story. The objects in the picturesare usually recognizable and include buildings in different stages of dilapidation, rooms and beds that may or may not have been inhabited, and objects-binoculars, twisted sheets, bricks, leaves, rods, and drifting sand. All this appears simultaneously mysterious and mundane.

Maybe it’s all just the author’s idea of the big joke. But mysteriously there’s enough recognizable and even semi-linear as narrative here to keep ahalfway intelligent or imaginative person interested all the way through.

Review copyright (c) 2013 by Dennis D. McDonald