The Dream Art Of Rick Veitch Volume 3: Crypto Zoo (Collected Rare Bit Fiends) (v. 3) [Paperback]

Rick Veitch (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 2004 | Series: Collected Rare Bit Fiends (Book 3)

Thirty years ago, Rick Veitch was a young man on the verge. Physically and emotionally exhausted from a wild and misspent youth, he'd fallen into a deep depression. Unable even to get out of bed, Veitch experienced a series of dreams that were so overwhelmingly powerful and rich in archetypal content, he was compelled to write them down in detail. Instinctively using the raw material from his own unconscious as a guide, Veitch worked his way out of depression and found the path he needed to realize his life goal of becoming an artist. Decades later, as a well known cartoonist and dreamworker, he revisited these early dream journals, illustrating them as chapters in a graphic novel for his Eisner-nominated comic series, Rare Bit Fiends. Collected for the first time in book form, Cryptoo Zoo is a deeply personal, harrowing and ultimately life affirming triumph of comic art that places the reader inside the maelstrom of what Carl Jung called a "confrontation with the unconscious."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Famous as Alan Moore's collaborator on Swamp Thing and supreme, Veitch also publishes comics he wholly creates, including some called Rare Bit Fiends in homage to comics pioneer Winsor McCay's pre-Little Nemo in Slumberland strip, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Like McCay's work, they record dreams. But Veitch draws his own dreams. The third Rare Bit Fiends collection gathers those of his early 1970s youth, when he was "on the run from a paternity claim, penniless and unemployable, morally bankrupt, a physical wreck, and . . . emotionally drained." To him the dreams are clearly therapeutic and predictive, and they enabled him to launch his comics career. He had begun a lasting interest in Jungian dream analysis just before he had them, and his concluding annotation of them reveals their symbolical ministry to him. They constitute a far freer-form narrative than that of such merely dreamlike comics as The Maxx, but not a boring one, especially for ardent dream analysts, whose numbers may swell a bit, thanks to Veitch's excellent drawing. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: King Hell Press (November 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962486469
• ISBN-13: 978-0962486463
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Woo! Twenty-eight graphic novels in print! Just in English! That's a whole shelf!

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Let's see -- what else? Oh, please stop by and check out my Visual Blog. The link is in the RSS Feed. It's an on-line art gallery really, which I've been updating daily for over two years with samples culled from a lifetime of making art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Dream Diary from Dark & Dire Depths!, January 25, 2007

By 

Zothique "Zothique" (Zothique) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream Art Of Rick Veitch Volume 3: Crypto Zoo (Collected Rare Bit Fiends) (v. 3) (Paperback)

Comicbook writer/artist started a truly quixotic project back in the '90s: it was a dream diary in the form of a monthly comicbook, entitled "Roarin' Rick's Rarebit Fiends." This is the third volume of a series that collects his best material from the comics... and this one is easily the most personal and, in my opinion, the best.

Veitch adapts material from a crucial turning point in his youth, when he first began recording his dreams. The art is simply astonishing -- and Veitch manages to accurately capture a "dreamlike" quality in his work.

Through often bizarre and disturbing images, we catch glimpses of a young man who's wrestling with moral and philosophical questions as he tries to find his path in life. Even if you've read the original comics issues, there's additional material here -- including notes explaining how Veitch's dreams mapped onto the reality of his situation and how, in some instances, they seemed to predict his future! Most of the book is in black and white, but there are a few gorgeous color pages (from a rare "Heavy Metal" story).

Deeply moving, inspirational, a feast for the eyes and mind, this book is indispensable for anyone who's involved in "dream work" -- the exploration of one's spirituality and psychology through their dream images.

The other two books in this series are called RABID EYE (Vol. 1) and POCKET UNIVERSE (Vol. 2). However, you don't need to read them in any particular order.

5.0 out of 5 stars The inner universe brought forth on the printed page, May 26, 2008

By 

William Timothy Lukeman - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dream Art Of Rick Veitch Volume 3: Crypto Zoo (Collected Rare Bit Fiends) (v. 3) (Paperback)

This third collection of Rick Veitch's remarkable series "Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends" is a stunning work of both art & psychological exploration. Detailing a crucial period in the then-young artist's life, which was clearly on a collision course with oblivion, it reveals how an ego-shattering torrent of dreams help him to turn his life around, get in touch with both his true nature & his true life's calling, and set a new, creative, rewarding course that continues to this day.

As Veitch himself warns the reader, don't mistake this for some vague, feelgood New Age nonsense meant to comfort with self-delusion rather than wrench free the soul. He doesn't sugarcoat the sometimes painful & terrifying path to self-knowledge that his dreams demanded, nor does he shrink from revealing his life at its lowest points. But he can afford to do that now. He's come a very long way indeed!

I agree with Veitch that the comics medium is ideally suited for this sort of dreamwork. Film might come close, but the combination of text & drawing on the printed page allows the reader to savor, to contemplate, to turn back in time if need be -- all perfect for studying the rich, symbolic images of the human psyche. It should encourage others to pay more attention to their own dreams, and to find ways of expressing them in tangible form.

Make no mistake: this book, along with its previous two volumes, deserves a place of honor on the same shelf as the work of Carl Jung & his followers. There's so much more going on within our minds than we realize, coming to transcendant flower every night in our dreams. Most highly recommended!