The Golem
Chris Kent
pencil art
153pp
24 x 16 cms
ISBN 9780956339614
£10.99
It is 1897.
Alfred Larchmont is a magician in a rather small and quite run down theatre -the sort of place where a "full house" seems to be a miracle. Then, one dark, wintery evening as he sits in his dressing room -light and heat from a fire in the grate.
Then Alfred receives a mysterious visitor, a certain Mr. Herbert Robonski. And Larchmont is taken aback somewhat with surprise. For Robonski's father was the great illusionist Vladimir Robonski who had recently passed away and rather strangely left Larchmont a small gift - a crate containing some of his conjuring equipment and ... a surprise.
If you are familiar with Jewish folklore or even the 1920s movie The Golem, you'll know where this is going. Of course, Larchmont is bemused when he finds a casket containing an oddly scripted parchment in a rather large trunk. Oh -and a creature of clay.
Larchmont comes into some coinage and his less than faithful wife tells the theatre manager about this and asks her to steal some of the gold coins from the trunk -but she cannot find any. And then tragedy as Larchmont's female assistant is decapitated by a stage guillotine. The theatre manager, the strong man and stage clown offer to make "it all go away". Then Larchmont feels the squeeze as the theatre manager blackmails him for £100 (in that period a fortune).
Larchmont activates the Golem intending to use it, and its special abilities, to offer the theatre manager a huge money making act.
I'll say no more about the story as you really should read it yourselves!
The entire book is drawn in pencil which was a bit odd to look at initially but you soon get into it. At one point -I read and was writing the review at 04:30 hrs- I suddenly stopped and thought "this is like watching an old silent horror/melodrama movie" -which was quite fun. There are some rather surreal scenes in the story and they all work well. There were, if I remember, two points where I thought a caption might have been useful to more smoothly link scenes BUT I think the lack of any captions added to the almost dream-like (or nightmare-like) story.
VERY rare to get an entire book of full pencilled (uninked) stripwork but it was quite good. So if you want to read something different try this!
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