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A review by museoffire
The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis
4.0
This is one dark acid trip of a book ladies and gents and it may mark the first time I haven't had the foggiest idea what was going on and still managed to enjoy the hell out of myself. If you'd like to take a trip to a strange little city in England where children "make" their parents and you've got to get inside at "knife o' clock" unless you want to be murdered by falling cutlery and "deathdays" take the place of birthdays then I welcome you to the world of young Scarper Lee who's death day is only weeks away.
Scarper would just as soon spend his few remaining days alive with his mates at school, placating his mum (an anxious hair dryer) and working on his father (a very impressive steam powered copper giant who is kept chained in the shed for his own protection). Alas the new girl in town, prickly Vera Pike and Castro Smith, the weirdest kid in town, have plans for him. They might know a way to help him avoid his death day. Then his father goes missing and someone has killed off one his mother's household gods! Now they're fugitives on the run from the police. And sure the police might be geriatric old ladies in slow moving model T rejects but they'll pursue Scarper and his friends forever if they have to.
Don't worry I had no idea what was going on either. Just go with it.
This was positively off the wall but still wildly entertaining. Rob Davis drops you straight into the deep end of the pool with a cinder block tied to your foot but if you give yourself up to the clever, dark insanity of his narrative and the razor sharp, starkness of his angry, angular drawings you're in for a hell of a ride.
This a very text heavy graphic novel peopled with sarcastic, sad teens navigating through young adulthood at what feels like the end of the world. Davis' characters are angry and disaffected but still hopeful that there may be more to the world than the bleak reality they're living in. Its that sense of expectation that keeps this from descending completely into the doldrums.
Davis leaves his story hanging by a thread and I will be waiting on tenterhooks for the next installment of this fascinating, dark little treasure.
Scarper would just as soon spend his few remaining days alive with his mates at school, placating his mum (an anxious hair dryer) and working on his father (a very impressive steam powered copper giant who is kept chained in the shed for his own protection). Alas the new girl in town, prickly Vera Pike and Castro Smith, the weirdest kid in town, have plans for him. They might know a way to help him avoid his death day. Then his father goes missing and someone has killed off one his mother's household gods! Now they're fugitives on the run from the police. And sure the police might be geriatric old ladies in slow moving model T rejects but they'll pursue Scarper and his friends forever if they have to.
Don't worry I had no idea what was going on either. Just go with it.
This was positively off the wall but still wildly entertaining. Rob Davis drops you straight into the deep end of the pool with a cinder block tied to your foot but if you give yourself up to the clever, dark insanity of his narrative and the razor sharp, starkness of his angry, angular drawings you're in for a hell of a ride.
This a very text heavy graphic novel peopled with sarcastic, sad teens navigating through young adulthood at what feels like the end of the world. Davis' characters are angry and disaffected but still hopeful that there may be more to the world than the bleak reality they're living in. Its that sense of expectation that keeps this from descending completely into the doldrums.
Davis leaves his story hanging by a thread and I will be waiting on tenterhooks for the next installment of this fascinating, dark little treasure.