Following on from The Spiral Cage, this is a fictional novella concerning a deformed man, known as Banshee, who is saved from the misery of sleeping rough by kindly people who have suffered their own fair share of hardship. A black lesbian couple, Etty and Jenny, take him in and, ultimately, he goes on to find love and happiness with a doctor who is stigmatised by a large port wine birthmark that covers half her body. The story is shot through with incidents of cruelty and violence towards the “ugly” and the unfortunate. The main narrative is counterpointed with an alternative… Read More
Acme Novelty Library 18
Chris Ware does melancholy very, very well. I could read any of his many works and find themes of depression, alienation and anxiety within them. I have picked this one because it also deals specifically with disability. An unnamed girl, refered to as “Nanna” whilst working as a nanny for a middle class family, has suffered a below knee amputation after a road traffic accident in her teens. Her story was actually introduced to readers as one of Ware’s “buildings stories” in Acme Novelty Library 16. This volume covers her lonely life after leaving art school. Her self esteem is very… Read More
Black Hole
If you like the films of David Lynch… Black Hole is a kind of gothic teen horror story. It is about a disease, known as “the bug” which, once caught by sexual contact with an infected person, causes strange things to happen to the afflicted body. One boy develops an extra mouth on his chest, complete with tiny tongue, a girl periodically sheds her skin, another grows a tail, some are horribly disfigured facially by tumours or warty growths. The stigmata of the disease may be impossible to conceal, facial deformity for example, but some sufferers choose to try and… Read More
The Spiral Cage
Originally published in 1990, this is a bit of a gem. Al Davison was born with spina bifida. his parents were told he wouldn’t live. Then, when he did, they were told that he would never walk. He taught himself to walk aged five and attended a “normal” school, where he was called “spaka” by his classmates. Al became an artist and illustrator. Although he can walk on his “scarecrow” legs, he still suffers considerably. He endured countless operations as a child and bouts of ME as an adult. He took up karate, which came in handy on several occasions… Read More