Rating: WARTY!
This graphic novel tells the story of a guy named Richard Carter who lives in the infamous Whitechapel region of London, and who is undergoing Hikikomori - a Japanese word describing someone who has withdrawn from society for six months or longer - sometimes years.
Because of this reference to a Japanese cultural phenomenon, I mistakenly began to think this was set in Japan, but as evidenced by the fact that character is Caucasian, as is his ex-girlfriend and all of his friends and colleagues, and even a passing priest, I was forced to conclude that this was merely a reference, and nothing to do with the story. It wasn't until later that his name and place of residence was conformed.
Richard has undergone this withdrawal because of something awful which has overwhelmed him, and today he decides he's going to kill himself. He had a Schrödinger experience one day which precipitated all this and in it, he saw a cat lying in the street, at first dead, then alive, then dead. After a while he let the horror of it go, but then he has the same experience with a bird, and the visions become worse and start showing up with people that he sees. He's predictably saved by a young woman who dresses, shall I say, less than conservatively, and who is named Alice McNelly.
Shortly after Alice's arrival, Richard finds himself pursued by a beast from hell which only looks, vaguely, like it was once human. The beast's speech was awfully hard to read. Too small and blurry, red on black so I pretty much skipped reading those parts, especially when I realized what a juvenile mentality this chraracter had. He's also amused by bathroom humor. There's a weird part around page 65 and 66, where the image frames seem out of order. First the bad guy is in the toilets kicking open the doors one by one, then he's heading for the toilets, then he's back in there again kicking open the doors.
Richard's a slim guy, but he curiously appears to put on weight at the bottom of page 70. Maybe the bottom of page seventy just makes characters appear overweight?! Does this panel make me look fat?! I got to about page 140 of this 160-some page novel and could stand to read it no longer. It made some kind of sense to begin with, but then it took the road to weirdsville and never looked back.
It ceased making any sense, it became disjointed and unintelligible (this doesn't even include the illegible ramblings of the red skeleton man), and it persisted in endless gore, which never appeals to me. If you like all of that, then this is for you, but I cannot in good faith recommend this as a worthy read.
