With an introduction by Canadian comics star and Lemony Snicket collaborator Seth, this work is strongly recommended for every true fan of the graphic arts. It is a masterpiece, demonstrating a level of skill and insight very few have even aspired to in the nearly 40 years since its initial publication. What emerges is not comprehensible in any mundane sense, but it presents enough of an illusion of a greater whole lurking just out of frame to be addictively engaging. Nonlinear in its approach to both space and time, the study mixes the banally familiar with the disturbingly alien. Accompanying the illustrations are bits of text, which are perhaps explicative in their unseen whole but as fragments offer only tantalizing hints of possible unity. Presented here are a series of black-and-white drawings, nearly clinical in their precision, detailing an enigmatic structure in an unspecified place and time. Its relative obscurity may be due to the late Vaughn-James’s devotion to his highly personal vision. He is best known for a series of graphic novels he published while living in. After spending time in London, Toronto, Tokyo and Paris, he lived for a long time in Brussels. While promoted by insiders in the years that followed, it is not well-known. Martin Vaughn-James (Decemin Bristol Jin Provence) was a cartoonist, painter, and illustrator. First published in 1975, this work foreshadowed the rise of the graphic novel.
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