Review: The Hidden

Richard Sala's graphic novel The Hidden bears perhaps the best title imaginable, although it is one that obscures the subject matter, and the immortal, public domain characters at its center, two of the most prevalent and influential characters from one of the greatest piece of horror fiction and one of the earliest science-fiction novels, predating that term by years and years and years.

Those characters are hidden from the reader in the title of the book (despite their appearance on the cover, rendered in such a Salaean manner as to be unrecognizable from their more popular, Golden Age Hollywood-inspired designs), and are, in fact, hidden from the reader throughout much of the story as it unfolds: One in plain sight, the other behind the scenes, only revealing himself as the story reaches its climax.

It's hard to talk about the comic without revealing that which is hidden, and I'm reluctant to do so, as the surprise is one of the book's many charms. I'd suggest if you have any interest in Richard Sala's work (and it's hard for me to imagine a comics reader who wouldn't), or in radical new takes—visual as well as narrative—on old horror story standards, you stop reading this blog post and make to your nearest library, comic shop, book store, Fangagraphics.com or online book seller and do what you can to get your hands on this 2011 book.

Without spoiling anything, here's what I can tell you. It's a 134-page, full-color graphic novel, written, drawn and lettered by Sala, all in his very distinctive style (There's no mistaking a panel of a Sala comic for a panel of anyone else's comic). It's generally square in format, with many pages featuring only one big drawing, and the others a few panels per page.

It opens with a young college professor awakening from a nightmare to see his small town being torn apart by giant men-shaped creatures, tall enough to peer into second story windows and to grip the young, voluptuous women Sala excels at drawing in one hand, each with stiched-up, mask-like faces. He knew this would happen, and flees.

He awakens in a cave after a rather vivid nightmare...

...and he now has a long gray beard, as if he slept a sleep similar to Rip Van Winkle. A young couple finds him and tells him that their car stopped and they've been walking, seeking to survive in a new world with no electricity and no communication. It's your basic end-of-the-world narrative, but unlike most of those in comics, film and TV these days, this one isn't zombie oriented.

Their group picks up more survivors, a pair of caterers that witnessed what seems like the cabal of powerful people behind this end-of-the-world scenario, although their leader mentions a behind-the-scenes partner.

Finally, the amnesiac, now-bearded professor leads them to a compound of an old associate, and goes to confront the hidden monster behind the mysterious goings-ons.

And that's as much as I can tell you without spoiling anything.

Sala unravels the reveal gently, with first the name of the professor (Victor), the colleague's rambling, long-winded recounting of their discoveries of how to extend life and reanimate the dead, through the application of electricity to the brain and the combination of body parts from different cadavers.

And, finally, Victor meets his "son," a gigantic—at least 15-feet tall—rotten-faced but well-dressed ghoul with a bizarre way of talking. "So—he it is—finally come to be in the presence of myself, since so many years," the monster greats his maker, "Hiding in always time—this was unsuitable, he it is."

So yeah, this is a Frankenstein story. The professor is the same one who created the monster we generally refer to as Frankenstein (and someone somewhere will always point out is technically called Frankenstein's monster). The giant, doll-like men and, presumably, the other strange monsters lurking around his hideaway that Colleen takes a hatchet to, are the creations of the monster; while it has no soul, no real humanity, it's driven to create others like himself, just as his creator created him.

These are his "new men," and unborn life is the only kind they'll tolerate. They sick to wipe out the old men (and, especially, it seems, the old women) and start over, the media moguls and powerful politicians the caterers saw gloating over the end of the world being mere pawns.

It's not the most intricately plotted of Sala's comics, but it is probably his grandest and most epic in terms of scale, and it's full of suspense, mystery, horror, violence and a perhaps surprising amount of action—at the climax, Victor and Colleen fight off a horde of new men with a hatchet and grenades.

It's also maybe the most-Hollywood ready of Sala's works. While there's generally an old-school Universal monster movie feel to much of his work, with the occasional dab of Hammer Studios aesthetic, this book seems the mostly easily made into a modern movie—maybe not of the big, dumb, would-be blockbuster movie sort (like, say, I,Frankenstein), but a smaller, more clever and stylistic film.

Monday Morning (Wo)Man vs. Cephalopod Moment

(Judy Drood take on Aunt Azalea's pet killer octopus in the pages of Richard Sala' Mad Night, published by Fantagraphics in 2005. And yes, it's the same octopus that previously killed that poor pirate gal)

Monday Morning (Wo)Man vs. Cephalopod Moment

(Aunt Azalea disposes of a member of her pirate girl gang in the pages of Richard Sala's Mad Night, published by Fantagraphics in 2005)

Reminder: Judy Drood is awesome

That's one and one-third pages of Richard Sala's Mad Night, which everyone who hasn't already read it should go read immediately, while those of us who have already read it should probably go read it again. Reading or re-reading Sala's Mad Night seems an infinitely better use of all of our free time than reading anything on the Internet right now.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I hope First Second's anthology Nursery Rhyme Comics is on your radar. It's a 100-page hardcover in which a who's who of comics greats present nursery rhymes as short comic strips. How great are these comics greats? Jamie Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Jules Feiffer, Mike Mignola, Kate Beaton, Sara Varon, Tony Millionaire, Patrick McDonnell, Stan Sakai, Gene Luen Yang,Craig Thompson and 39 other artists make up the roster.

Robot 6 is interviewing about a tenth of the contributors this week, in a series called "The Sequential Goose" which kicked off yesterday with Tim O'Shea's interview of Eleanor Davis. Today was my turn, and I had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Richard Sala, one of my all-time favorite cartoonists. You can read the piece here, and do be sure to check out Robot 6 all week (if you don't already) for mor.

Come on, Snicket! You call that a blurb?

Seriously Snicket, what sort of nonsense is this? It's supposedly a blurb extolling the virtues of his one-time collaborator Richard Sala's latest work, Cat Burglar Black. But Lemony Snicket—if that is his real name—instead just rattles off about 30 almost completely random exclamations that could be referring to just about anything.

I say almost completely random, because, as you read those, you'll notice they're in alphabetical order. See, rather than saying something about the book he's supposedly providing a back-cover blurb for, Snicket instead makes it all about him and shows off how clever he is.

For shame, Lemony Snicket, for shame.

Couldn't you have just followed that nice Dan Clowes boy's example and said something nice and simple about the book, like, "A deranged masterwork, jet-propelled from start to finish with spooky thrills?"

Aw, maybe I'm just being so hard on Snicket because I'm jealous. Not because his Series of Unfortunate Events books have no doubt made him a scroogeillionaire, or because Lemony is cooler name than Caleb (although, come to think of it, those are probably also pretty good reasons to be jealous of him), but because he thought of a way to say something clever in praise of Sala's latest book, while I found myself completely stumped when I sat down to try and write a formal review of it.

Part of the problem is that I guess I'm just a little too found of Sala at this point, making it hard to talk about how good his work is. In my mind, "Richard Sala" has long since become synonymous with "great art," so reviewing new works of his fill me with a sort of "Aw, what's the point?"-ism. It's Richard Sala, what else do people need to know, really?

Cat Burglar Black, an original graphic novel from First Second, opens with a typically shapely Sala heroine (I wholeheartedly agree with Snicket's V-word, "Va va va voom!"), dressed in a leotard and mask, running through a dark forest and leaping to safety in the twisty, curlicue-esque branches of a typical Sala tree, as her pursuer, a whild boar snorts and "rawnk"s at her heels.

It then flashes back to introduce us to the imperiled heroine, white-haired K., who has just arrived at a mysterious private school for beautiful teenage girls with interesting names who, she's surprise to learn, are all being trained as super-thieves. K. has plenty of experience with thievery, given that her late father was apparently an accomplished thief, and the headmistress of her orphanage was a villanous Fagin-type that forced her charges to serve in a kiddie crime gang.

As expected, it's quite good, and full of the things one comes to expect from Sala—beautiful girls, creepy, kooky character designs, old houses, a degree of timelessness in the setting that makes it seem as if the story could be taking place any time between the Victorian Era and tomorrow, Sala's signature lettering style, etc.

There were a few surprising aspects of the book (other than Snicket's terrible blurb, of course) though, which I could call attention to.

First, the title on the cover is shiny. Like, see the box in the lower right corner that says "Cat Burglar Black by Richard Sala?" That's all in a special ink with a slicker texture than the rest of cover, a special ink that reflects light and looks super-cool. I know, I know it's a sort of cover enhancement on a comic book and I'm supposed to reflexively hate such things, but damn it this one is cool! And it's on a comic book with a spine and doesn't seem to have had any impact on the cover price, so it's okay in this instance.

Second, it doesn't really wrap up all of the loose ends introduced. K and some of the other characters are involved in a much bigger story than the one between these covers, and the ending seems somewhat abrupt, given all of the unanswered questions yet resolved by the final page, on which our heroine determines to find out exactly what happened to some of the cast-members who disappeared throughout the course of the book. I would imagine it is purposely written this way to set-up future installments (or potential future installments), but because of the lack of a "Volume One" or "Book One" anywhere on the cover or spine, I just assumed this would be a complete story without any plot elements saved up for sequels.

And thirdly and finally, I was a little surprised at the tone of the book. Specifically, how much it read like a young adult novel. I shouldn't have been, of course, as that's how it was marketed, but I guess that when I think of Sala I think of Peculia waking up half-naked in bed, or the zombies ripping that poor gal's top off before eating her in Evil Eye #6 or Judy Drood swearing and beating up douche-bag teenagers.

I was reminded of Cat Burglar Black's tone an audience this past week as I was reading through the most recent crop of First Second releases. This book was released in the direct market on September 1, while on September 29 First Second released Ball Peen Hammer, Refresh, Refresh and Tiny Tyrant Vol. 2: The Lucky Winner.

Tiny Tyrant is an all-ages/kids comic, it's style, humor and format all perfectly suited towards grade-school aged kids. Cat Burglar Black is an all-ages book, probably geared toward readers 10-16 or so. Refresh, Refresh is a mature, adult graphic novel, but one that is probably also well-suited for older teens. Ball Peen Hammer is a dark, dark comic for adults that readers under 18 probably shouldn't read (and they probably wouldn't like it if they did anyway).

That's a pretty wide range of demographics covered by a single comics publisher in a single month's worth of releases, isn't it?

Judy Drood, Girl Detective

She swears.





A lot.





She wears a dagger in a sheath on her thigh.






And she knows how to use it.





She beats up douchebag teenagers.




A lot.




And, perhaps most importantly, she knows exactly how to deal with clowns:





And if that doesn't work...




(All badly scanned images from Fantagraphics' The Grave Robber's Daughter by Richard Sala)