Rock Bottom [Paperback]

Joe Casey (Author), Charlie Adlard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2006

What would you do if you discovered you were turning to stone? What would that extraordinary circumstance do to your life? Writer Joe Casey (Wildcats Version 3.0, X-Men, Superman) and Eisner Award-nominated artist Charlie Adlard (Walking Dead) answer these questions and more in this long-awaited, gut-wrenching original graphic novel drama. Thomas Dare was an ordinary man with ordinary problems, until fate steeped in to turn his life upside-down.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A graphic novel about a man who is turning into stone might sound like it will feature superhero adventures along the lines of the Fantastic Four's The Thing. Instead, Casey (Wildcats Version 3.0; Gødland) and Adlard (Walking Dead) are more interested in what would happen to that man psychologically and emotionally. Rock Bottom quickly reveals itself to be a disease drama, albeit one with a visual hook that's perfect for comics. Adlard's art employs thin but direct black lines with no color until Thomas Dare's skin transforms into gray pavement. It's an effective way of illustrating the frightening progress of Dare's disease. Casey's story is concerned with the man inside the stone and how this strange condition has him reflect upon his entire life. Covering much ground, the story moves along at a brisk pace, and rarely melodramatic. The third act adds in some light social satire as Dare becomes a media sensation due to his remarkable situation, but Casey keeps his script focused. There's just the right amount of pathos so when the image of Dare's completely petrified face appears, except for his anxious and sad eyes, it's haunting. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Casey and Adlard's second collaboration (after Codeflesh 2004) varies the theme of the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man. Pianist Tom Dare has just messily divorced, and now one of his fingers is hardening. He's getting much heavier, but it doesn't show. He sees his doctor, who's baffled but puts him through tests that ultimately confirm that he's turning to stone. Exiling fantasy to Tom's nightmares, Casey works out the story's developments--the doctor's incredulous, beleaguered research; Tom's lawyer-best friend Fred's anguished loyalty; Tom's reconciliation with the ex and with the woman he has recently impregnated; and even the most sensational turn, the heroic act that makes the sick man unwantedly famous--with kitchen-sink realism. Adlard gives the piece tremendous punch by stripping away all shading except a light gray indicating Tom's gradual hardening. He draws only sharp, spidery lines against the pages' stark white. Lacking the perspectival clues of color, this style demands viewer cooperation to be deciphered, thereby evoking a frustrated anxiety like, though much milder than, what the characters are feeling. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: AiT/PlanetLar (October 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932051457
• ISBN-13: 978-1932051452
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.7 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,543,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An age old story with a new twist, April 23, 2011

By 

Andy Shuping (Macon, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rock Bottom (Paperback)

Cross posted from ComicsForge

When you look at this book it has such a simple front cover that you really don't expect much from it. I mean it's a picture of a hand with what looks like a weird shadow underneath it, broken and disjointed. But...its a pretty powerful work and while the tale has been told before, this provides a unique look at the age old question...what would you do if you knew you were going to do die? What would you do to try to live?

This is the story of one man, Tommy, and his life. Everything is normal, well at least as normal as life can be. Tommy's going through a divorce after being caught having an affair, he's trying not to be his dad, and he plays the piano at a blues and rhythms club. But something is happening to him. He's getting stiff and sore and tests reveal...he's turning into stone, literally. It's not a magic spell or some long lost object, just a strange genetic mutation. They discover his dad had it and died from it, and it's likely that his unborn son also has it. We see how the world deals with the revelation of his disease when he becomes a hero. And we see how he wants to deal with the disease. Worlds collide as the battle over life, health, egos, friendship, and death all come to a head. In the end though friendship wins.

The writing is...different. At first I was a bit disappointed that they didn't focus more on Tommy and what he was going through, but I started to think about what they did focus on. Tommy wanted to be normal. Nothing else. He didn't want to be a hero, he didn't want to go down in the history books, nor did he want to get back together with his ex-wife. He just wanted to live. What Joe Casey shows us is how he interacted with the world and how it interacted back with him. The lawyer who protects him and does his best to be a good friend. The doctor who attempts to treat him and eventually goes against the medical community to give his friend some peace in the end. Casey tells a powerful story that isn't highly dramatized, no last minute cures, no man wanting to be seen as a hero or a villain. Casey captures real life and expertly answers, for the real world, what would you do if you were dying?

Adlard's drawings are phenomenal. At first glance you would say they were simplistic or looked a bit weird, but what he's done is brilliant. He's used blind contour drawing, this is where the pen never leaves the page as the picture is being drawn, and everything is just one line. And while some of the details are drawn in with separate lines, the use of blind contour drawing gives the characters a certain amount of depth and humanity that other styles might lack. Adlard expertly draws human emotions with such simple lines and nothing else. No shading, no colors, just the line and it displays so much humanity and hope and sorrow.

It's an interesting book and I think I would recommend people read it at least once regardless of genre type they normally like...because this just doesn't fit in to any normal genre. And I would hope that they would hold onto it and ponder more upon the story told.