Ball Peen Hammer [Paperback]

Adam Rapp (Author), George O'Connor (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2009

The world is dying.  After most of the city succumbed to the plague, Welton's staying inside -- permanently.  But hiding in his claustrophobic basement room -- the only place he knows is safe -- exacts a gruesome price, and he becomes part of a collective that's killing children.  Infected with the plague himself, with no way to find the woman he loves, Welton takes refuge in apathy -- until someone knocks on his door. 

 

Ball Peen Hammer gives us a window into life in a half-deserted apartment building in a time of raw love, sacrifice, fear, and death. 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an eerie postapocalyptic urban world, humanity is turning on itself. This graphic novel revolves around a trio who were likely downtown hipsters before the crisis began. Welton, a musician, and Aaron, an author, still have the energy to discuss the purpose of art, but find themselves committing unpardonable acts to save themselves. Exley, an actress, unexpectedly ends up caring for Horlick, a young boy who is teetering between playing childish pranks and becoming a menacing criminal like his older brother. All three adults reminisce about previous loves, and one tries to seek out a passionate one-night stand from the past. Rapp, best known as a novelist and playwright, reflects on the ways we cling to art and passion in the face of destruction and the horror we feel as those things slip away. His story can be thought provoking, although at times his plotting and metaphors—and the unrelenting grimness of the story—feel heavy-handed. O'Connor's sinister, stunning artwork, with rich coloring by Hilary Sycamore, helps propel the story and, in the end, is the most haunting aspect of the book. (Oct.)
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Review

"Not for gentle readers, Rapp’s fatalistic urban future is never scarier than when its child and adult players’ motivations and emotions are the most realistic." -- Booklist

 

"Eerie . . . Rapp reflects on the ways we cling to art and passion in the face of destruction and the horror we feel as those things slip away." -- Publisher's Weekly

 

Full Review From Booklist

 

Playwright Rapp writes movies and gritty YA novels (e.g., Little Chicago, 1998), too, and his first graphic novel attests his flair for dramatic staging and well-developed characters and plotting. Set in a hovel in which a young man dying of an AIDS-like infection lives, loving his guitar and hating his “job” of disposing of the bodies of murdered children. He doesn’t realize that the love of his life, a beautiful actress, has taken sanctuary in another part of the building. Moral turpitude in these characters’ world has been stood virtually on end, and the story probes such issues as what ingrained in us makes us human, lovable, frightening, and evil. Eminently suited to Rapp’s grim and demanding vision, O’Connor’s full-color art meshes with the spare text and conveys portions of the tale all by itself; it embraces just the right cartooniness to keep the flow of grim events emotionally bearable. Not for gentle readers, Rapp’s fatalistic urban future is never scarier than when its child and adult players’ motivations and emotions are the most realistic. —Francisca Goldsmith

 

Review in 8/10 Publishers Weekly

In an eerie postapocalyptic urban world, humanity is turning on itself. This graphic novel revolves around a trio who were likely downtown hipsters before the crisis began. Welton, a musician, and Aaron, an author, still have the energy to discuss the purpose of art, but find themselves committing unpardonable acts to save themselves. Exley, an actress, unexpectedly ends up caring for Horlick, a young boy who is teetering between playing childish pranks and becoming a menacing criminal like his older brother. All three adults reminisce about previous loves, and one tries to seek out a passionate one-night stand from the past. Rapp, best known as a novelist and playwright, reflects on the ways we cling to art and passion in the face of destruction and the horror we feel as those things slip away.

Review in 11/09 SLJ

Gr 10 Up–Rapp and O’Connor tell the story of four people trying to survive in a society suffering from environmental, biological, and political disease. Aaron, an idealistic novelist trying to capture in words the reason for his society’s collapse, holes up in a basement with Welton, who is slowly dying of a strange plague. Meanwhile Exley, a young woman who once had a brief encounter with Welton, befriends a boy named Horlick. All four characters are ensnared by the government to work in a gruesome program involving the eponymous hammer, while Exley and Welton desperately search for one another, never realizing that they are on different floors of the same building. The authors have clearly come to the graphic form with an understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Rather than trying to tell a novel’s worth of story with excess narration and dialogue, they allow large passages to unfold entirely in images. The unresolved ending is Rapp’s hallmark, and this book reads as a statement about the uncertain future, allowing the novel to hit home with the taut force of a good short story.–Mark Flowers, John F. Kennedy Library, Vallejo, CA

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: First Second; First Edition edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596433000
• ISBN-13: 978-1596433007
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,495,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Has the Ability to Resonate with Dark Effect, November 17, 2009

By 

GraphicNovelReporter.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ball Peen Hammer (Paperback)

Easily one of the creepiest and most disturbing books to come out in the comics format recently, Ball Peen Hammer is a postapocalyptic tale of humans forced to do vile things just in order to survive. Little explanation is offered as to why they find themselves in this predicament (would it matter?), and it's more or less irrelevant. The real meat of the story, which is done by playwright Adam Rapp, is the toll exacted on people who are given the most horrible of demands.

George O'Connor is more than up to the task of illustrating this dark fare. His multipaneled pages are saturated with heavy ink but light on color, creating an atmosphere of little hope amidst the foreboding of evil. We meet Welton first, then Aaron, two men thrown together in a rat-infested building where they await instructions from an oafish big man who assigns them their grisly tasks. You may be wondering what those tasks are...I won't ruin the surprise here, but suffice to say, the title gives you a clue.

Ball Peen Hammer is simple and straightforward in most respects. The hows and whys matter somewhat, but not much. The real point of the story, it seems, is the devastating effect man's inhumanity to man causes in all of us and how far we will all go to survive.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope to be found, and Rapp and O'Connor seize on it and give the story a small bit of light despite the heavy subject matter. What you walk away with in this tale may be disturbing, but it's thought-provoking as well and will stick with you. So while it's not for the queasy or the easily upset, it does have the ability to resonate with dark effect.

-- John Hogan

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but ultimately far too obtuse..., September 24, 2009

By 

N. S. Michael (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ball Peen Hammer (Paperback)

(What's this?)

BPH starts off with abrupt violence and despair... and that continues through the trade.

Focusing on a pair of lovers, seperated in post apocalyptic America, BPH struggles to bring its readers varying messages of ennui, depression, hope, and ultimately destruction. Its the last throes of a dying culture and, guess what? ITS OURS!

The setting is definitely dystopia, where the only trade is in food or lives... and that's where things get weird. A prevailing plot device is the mute strongman who, at pauses in story progression, appears to demand sacrifice, tattoo minions, and even ring the nights bells. Horrible, horrible things are happening in this nearfuture, and even the little glimmers of light and good are lies glossed over... the hallucination of a young girl... the hope of new pregnancy.

Sigh.

The art is stimulating and I could definitely enjoy the style if the author manages to get it animated, but the story, the symbols, the resolution... its hard to come away with anything but sadness and anger.

I'd like to sit down with the author and pick his brain to see what he was trying to get across.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Never Meant to Be a Comic, August 3, 2009

By 

Michael J. Tresca "Talien" (Fairfield, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ball Peen Hammer (Paperback)

(What's this?)

Ball Peen Hammer was never meant to be a comic. It's clear, from the claustrophobic setting of a basement and a clock tower to the long silences and close-up panels of characters' expressions, that this graphic novel is a parable. The post-apocalyptic world outside is a foil to reinforce the claustrophobia and paranoia of those two little rooms. This review contains spoilers.

Ball Peen Hammer is about three art forms: music, writing, and acting. Welton is a musician, Underjohn is a writer, Exley is an actress. All three are part of a commune of artists who have seen been scattered from the Undertunnels by the Syndicate, an oppressive regime of gas-mask wearing soldiers. Adam Rapp, a novelist and playwright himself, is merciless in his critique of these three pathetic creatures. Welton is a shiftless guitarist, never leaving the basement and playing the same song over and over about a woman he loved - but is too frightened to try to find her or save himself. Underjohn is immune to the plague but returns to Welton's basement to write about his experience, cataloguing the slow death of the bleak world around him. Exley insists on wearing her little black dress and up-do hairstyle even in the middle of a city besieged by acid rain and wild dogs.

Ball Peen Hammer is about love lost. Welton, who fell in love with Exley, is paralyzed by the experience, stuck in a perpetual state of yearning for a moment he can never reclaim. Underjohn was in love with a man who died from the plague, but never expressed his affection for him before he passed. Exley carries Welton's child and in her journey to find him regresses to acting - as a mother, as a teacher - to Horlick, a thirteen-year-old street kid who lives in the clock tower with his older brother, Dennis.

Ball Peen Hammer is about filling holes. There are emotional holes in all of the characters, but there are also physical holes: the Collector, who slides in and out of manhole covers to ring bells, repair lights, and tattoo numbers; Horlick, who reenacts American Pie with a melon; Welton, who can never get his toilet to flush; Underjohn, who fled the underground commune after it was filled with concrete by the Syndicate.

Ball Peen Hammer is about the loss of innocence. There are sacks in the basement. Underjohn discovers later that he's a Sacker, whose job is to use a ball peen hammer to fill those sacks. Welton, a Dragger, is haunted by the ghosts of those he helped drag into the basement. Exley inserts herself into a family that doesn't want her. And Horlick pretends he is much tougher than he lets on.

Ball Peen Hammer is not a glimpse into a larger world, part of a running series, the beginning of a comic book franchise, a happy story, a quick read, or meant to be understood literally. It is Rapp's No Exit, banished to comic form because nobody's going to want to see a play that revolves around killing kids with a hammer.