The Tragical Comedy Or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch A Romance

The closest I've come to seeing a Punch and Judy show is a recreation of an Italian commedia dell'arte performance. Punch comes from Pulcinella who then became Punchinello and finally Punch. The show standardized in the Victorian era. In 1827 John Payne Collier published a playbook for Punch and Judy professors called The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy and claimed it was told to him from Giovanni Piccini. It's that playbook that forms the foundation for Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's unusual graphic novel The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch. It's set in a similar failing seaside resort as MirrorMask but twenty or thirty years earlier. A grown man recounts the summer he spent with his grandparents while waiting for the birth of his sister. His summer is punctuated by scenes from Punch and Judy and he finds disturbing parallels with the violence of the show with his own life. Meanwhile his grandfather's arcade is on its last legs and he's there for its closing. The reasons behind the arcade's closure are tied up in dark family secrets, all of which are overwhelming for a young boy and still puzzling for the man as he reminisces. What makes the graphic novel stand out as something more than just a dark nostalgia piece is Dave McKean's illustrations. They are a collage of photography and drawings. Sometimes in the photographs the characters are wearing masks to mimic the drawings. Sometimes multiple photographs (including blurred ones) are put together to give a still frame effect of the rapid and chaotic motion often used to show possession in horror films. McKean's work mirrors the violence of the Punch and Judy and reveals the horror inside something taken as children's entertainment. In the time since the graphic novel was first published, it has been adapted for the stage.

I bought this book as a present for a great friend of mine, but I couldn't help but read it before I actually gave it to her. The cover is itself a work of art and the illustrations and overall design are just perfect. They are as adequate to the way the story is told as I have ever seen. (though I admit I haven't read many graphic novels and my opinion might be biased)The novel is a work of genius. You see the narrator both as a young boy and the adult he became, telling you some events of his early life and his family's history while showing you parts of Mr. Punch's puppet show. Even reading it as quickly as I had to, the connections between them and the thoughts and feelings they brought up left me smiling breathlessly, in pure exhilaration. I was already a fan of Neil Gaiman, but this made me look at his work from a very different perspective and much more attention.(or will make me look, I have seen only a bit of what he has done, and completely read even less) I recommend this to anyone who is either a fan of Gaiman's and Mckean's work, of just to anyone who is looking for a graphic novel that is more that just another one.