Book-A-Day 2018 #252: Pictures That Tick 2 by Dave McKean

Dave McKean is a deeply classy cartoonist, the kind whose work is as likely to be first shown on the walls of a gallery as in a publication somewhere. And even his comics that do appear alongside other comical funnies are more serious and elevated than their peers -- aiming to be Works of Art and not just entertainments.

Sometimes this can be exhilarating, since creators working at a high pitch can bring audiences up to their level. And sometimes it can be annoying, as when you're trying to read over two hundred pages of far-too-stylized Dave McKean lettering on a tablet, with the pages just that little bit smaller than they would be on paper.

McKean is never going to go out of his way to make it easy for you to read and understand his work -- not physically (just understanding the words and images) and not conceptually. He's simply not interested in an audience that isn't going to work at least as hard as he does.

Pictures That Tick 2 is a 2014 collection of McKean's short comics; it's so classy that it's subtitled "Short Narrative Exhibition." Set your expectations appropriately.

It's also so classy, or so heavily designed, that it has a short comic even before the table of contents, and a title page that primarily consists of squiggles laid out to look like words but which cannot be ready, on a typically moody McKean background. You know, I like his work, but often a little of it goes a long way.

Oh, and another short strip interrupts the title/copyright page -- McKean is never not futzing around with book design if you let him.

Finally, about a dozen pages in, you'll finally get that table of contents, in a small scripty font on a red-and-black mottled background. (One suspects no one ever actually explained the importance of legibility in book design to a young and impressionable McKean, but instead expounded the virtues of drama.)

There are about five substantial stories here -- two creation myths from an aborted project where McKean would be a showrunner for a third incarnation of the Storyeller series for Jim Henson Productions, and three projects that were art exhibitions/installations converted into comics. Also included are about a dozen shorter pieces -- dreams, posters, wordless pieces, evocative comics for a jazz CD, and other random stuff.

The two creation myths are fairly straightforward: they're very Dave McKean-ish comics, so the words are sometimes hard to read and the virtuosity of the art sometimes obscures the meaning, but the story isn't difficult to follow or deliberately obscure.

The three gallery pieces are more evocative, designed to be fragments or moments that gallery-goers will experience probably but not necessarily in this order, and so the bits have to be more independent and separate. One is a journey around part of England's coast, as a woman chases her runaway husband and finds the art he has inspired in his wake. Another is a series of bits of dialogue related to a true story from McKean's youth, about something bad he did that he doesn't quite explain or detail. The other one, "The Blue Tree," which comes first in the book, is the closest to a conventional narrative and relates pretty closely to the two creation myths -- McKean's notes say he was explicitly trying to combine religious and scientific ways of looking at the world, from his two immediately preceding projects.

I'm not sure what size Pictures That Tick 2 is in the physical world. I hope it's as large as possible: McKean's work is best the more you can submerge yourself into it, to have it surrounding you on all sides. (So he's probably best at gallery shows, and second best making movies.) These are comics to think about and ruminate on and read slowly, teasing out nuance and detail. But they will probably be slightly annoying, at least at moments, even to readers who like and enjoy McKean's work, just because of the barriers McKean puts up between his work and the audience. So make sure you know that going in, if you do decide to go in.