Fires [Paperback]

Lorenzo Mattotti (Author), Bernd Metz (Editor), Tom Leighton (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This haunting, supernatural tale, by an Italian illustrator and fashion designer, displays the artistry of European comics at their very best. The great battleship Anselm II steams into the harbor of a small island, the hills of which inexplicably and continuously blaze with fires. The ship has come to explore the island and investigate a series of missing vessels in the vicinity. Lieutenant Absinthe, a young naval officer leading the reconnaissance, discovers that this enigmatic place is inhabited by even more inscrutable creatures and that he has been selected, by two chimerical cherubs, to be the island's defender. After deserting his command, the lieutenant, possessed and hallucinating, proceeds to destroy his shipmates. Mattotti's color drawingsvivid, brooding and rigorously composedcombine masterfully with a narrative of great sensitivity and lyrical mystery. The artwork has the conceptual depth and textural richness of paintings and propels the eye through this finely crafted, gripping story of mystic possession, psychic delirium and explosive, fiery retribution.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Catalan Communications; 1st US edition (October 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874160480
• ISBN-13: 978-0874160482
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,688,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fires- a great work of art, April 3, 2003

By 

Viktor Moberg (sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fires (Hardcover)

"Fires" is about a young marine officer who leaves his ship to save a magic island from destruction. It is a beautiful, provoking and sometimes very scary artwork. For some reason it made me think of H.P Lovecraft's "Chtulhu".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not a novel - THE NOVEL ! Fires - a book that changes life., September 18, 1998

By 

Julian A. Freudenbach ([e-mail]-pa... (Passau/Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fires (Paperback)

There's not much to say - the people who read fires know what i mean and the others... well, they should just spend a few days on reading it. It's one of those books you seldomly find, a wonderfull novel from deep inside. Just read it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A unique reading experience, like none that I have ever had., March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fires (Hardcover)

Visually expressive, the illustrations that acompany this novel are put to great use where words would not do thr story justice. Nightmarish and surreal, the novel (seemingly) never fully explains itself. Some of the panels of artwork are so abstract, they could hang by themsleves in a New York Gallery.

Yes, you could call it a graphic novel, but that phrase, unfortunately, in the United states is still heavily associated with the comic book and thus a negative connotation. Novel would be much better since I feel that it competes quite nicely with some of the best of the written word.

Reccomended for mature readers only, not because of explicit content but because it is much too deep and abstract for the little ones to be able to graps it.