Recommended Reading: 'The Ticking' by Renée French

Filed by: Darren on December 14, 2007 at 21:32
Filed In: Art, Books, Comics & GNs

File this one under 'odd... very odd'. The Ticking is a hardback graphic novel (in the sense of it being an illustrated story with panels and short captions) by cartoonist and illustrator Renée French.

It's a very sweet, sad, and somewhat disquieting story about a lad called Edison Steelhead, who is born with a hereditary facial deformity and whose father, as a result, takes him away to be raised on a remote island, far from what he assumes will be the mockery and laughter of a cruel and intolerant society.

A page from 'The Ticking' by Renee French

The rest of the story tells of how Edison grows up, becomes an illustrator, becomes brother to a chimpanzee, and eventually runs away from home to avoid the same plastic surgery that his father had in order to be normalised. Which isn't so much of a spoiler as it might sound, because the plot really isn't the point of this simply told yet complex tale, which is much more an invitation to further thought than a mere comic narrative.

Full marks also to publisher Top Shelf, who really know how to grab a potential reviewer's attention. The book was packaged rather intriguingly for a start (excuse the ropey photography, I'm hoping to improve after a quick impromptu lighting lesson the other week):

...and inside the wrapping I found two further Renée French pocket books: a short tale about a gang of bizarre little rodents called Micrographica (a print version of the online comic featuring the same fuzzy characters), as well as Edison Steelhead's Lost Portfolio: Exploratory Studies of Girls and Rabbits which is, if anything, even stranger than The Ticking itself.

Definitely one for fans of indie comics, pencil illustrations and weird little stories that you somehow can't seem to get out of your head for quite some time after you've read them...

Filed on: December 14, 2007
Filed under: Art, Books, Comics & GNs
Tagged with: comics | illustration | Renee French | Top Shelf Productions |