Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works [Paperback]

Barnaby Ward (Author, Illustrator), Kevin K Hanna (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2008

Critically acclaimed graphic novelist Barnaby Ward paints a story about life, loss, and alienation, all with an elegant distinctive style unmatched in visual story telling. "Sixteen Miles to Merricks and other works", collects the best and most breathtaking picture and stories from the mind of Ward, in this 200+ page omnibus. Available this August.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The longest of this series of short stories deals with a strange woman who leads a man into a series of lengthy corridors beneath his house. The work is eerie, strange and at its best when wordless. The plots don't always make sense, aiming more for a dreamlike quality: one moment, the man and woman lost in the corridors are strangers, the next they're lovers comforting each other after a tsunami. The other stories have more pull: a woman wearing a helmet that lets her see TV struggles with the reception aerial, and a girl traveling a barren landscape finds and rides a gigantic slug that, at one point, swallows her only to regurgitate her at the ride's end. Ward's art is absolutely enchanting. The unrelated stills at the end of the book are worth as much as the stories; it's got an arty steampunk, tentacle-porn edge that's charming and deep. Gazing at his images of leggy, soulful girls with octopi, spiders and other creepy-crawlies on leashes, you understand the appeal of the genre. In the end, however, Ward seems one of a growing number of illustrator/cartoonists who are more evocative artists than true storytellers. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Barnaby Ward has the design sense and color palette that I would kill for, and If I ever meet him in person I'll probably do just that." --- Dave Johnson- 100 Bullets, Batman

"Barnaby Ward has the design sense and color palette that I would kill for, and If I ever meet him in person I'll probably do just that." --- Dave Johnson- 100 Bullets, Batman

"Barnaby Ward mixes the class and glamour of european illustration, with the flair and originality of Japanese manga to create wonderfully compelling and stunning pieces of art." --- Ashley Wood- Popbot, Metal Gear Solid

"Beautiful drawings, beautiful women, I couldn't stop turning the pages." --- Jeff Smith Bone, RASL

"Barnaby Ward mixes the class and glamour of european illustration, with the flair and originality of Japanese manga to create wonderfully compelling and stunning pieces of art." --- Ashley Wood- Popbot, Metal Gear Solid

"Barnaby Ward mixes the class and glamour of european illustration, with the flair and originality of Japanese manga to create wonderfully compelling and stunning pieces of art." --- Ashley Wood- Popbot, Metal Gear Solid

"Barnaby Ward has the design sense and color palette that I would kill for, and If I ever meet him in person I'll probably do just that." --- Dave Johnson- 100 Bullets, Batman

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Frogchildren Studios; 1 edition (September 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605851507
• ISBN-13: 978-1605851501
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,172,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get It, September 12, 2008

By 

A. Sealy - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works (Paperback)

Buy this book! The supporting stories are fun and have creative visuals (especially the last page of "Rooftops"), but the main story - Merricks - is Barnaby's tour de force, even better than his obscure but darkly genius "Telephone Burns" (not included in this anthology). For a good summary of Merricks and an interview with the author visit http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/details.php?id=1424 .

The central story mixes surreal landscapes and dream logic with a tender, sweet, and tragic real-world story. It evokes aquaphobia, claustrophobia, and mazeophobia to create a tight and engaging thriller that never drags as it builds towards a satisfying, if somewhat predictable, conclusion. Plot isn't as important here as characterization and visual atmosphere, which are Barnaby's strengths. To imagine this story, picture Nihei's mazeology mixed with Thompson's humanity and Miyazaki's wide-eyed earnestness.

I should also point out that one of Barnaby's idiosyncrasies is that while his artistic style shifts from story to story, and he draws many different types of male characters, the female leads of all of his stories look identical. He explains this by saying that his archetype girl is like the same actress playing different roles. This may sound like a limitation, but he has perfected her so much, and can make her "act" so expertly, that you can see why this "director" keeps choosing her to star in all of his work.

If Merricks doesn't win an Eisner award next year then something is very wrong with the world.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes!, September 24, 2008

By 

J Colby (Tampa, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works (Paperback)

I love this book. The art is deceptively simple, and yet this book is one haunting visual after another. Ward is excellent at filtering out extraneous detail and leaving only the most compelling lines and textures. As mentioned before, his landscapes, architectural, and machinery drawings are amazing, his women are hot and his stories are worth hearing. I highly recommend this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars An art book collection of comics, revealing a unique and incredible talent, November 17, 2010

By 

Adriano1977 (Langen (Hessen), Deutschland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works (Paperback)

Barnaby Ward is, first and foremost, an amazing illustrator. He masters completely and seemingly with ease a drawing style that meshes ligne claire, manga (especially Tsutomu Nihei's claustrophobic mega-architectures), liberty style, hints of tentacle porn (in a chaster but Giger-esque way), poster design, 60s fascination and charm, and a mature talent for pacing and storytelling in his sequential art works.
The title story is about a couple trying to stay an ominous occurrence by escaping in a nightmarish underground maze... But what is real, and what is dream? Who are they, and why do they stick so much t each other, if they seem to be perfect strangers? The answers are subtle and subtly spread throughout the tale, impeccably draw, paced, creating a quiet atmosphere of dread, anticipation and melancholy.
The other two are about a mysterious voyage of a young girl, with the aid of an 8-legged clawed sort of slug (that might or might not be an hallucination) and about another trying to find the source of the interference of her prehistoric bovine-shaped TV helmet (on the roofs of a town built on... What?)
Finally, the reader's treated to a series of wonderful illustration, mostly sci-fi themed or from an ongoing "Alice In Wonderland" series of pieces: A sexy Alice in a slightly horror setting...
It's really hard to find the book at a decent price, but I recommend it highly, because the book is fantastic, beautifully designed in a large format that greatly benefits the art, and because talent here is unique and mind-blowing... And can be largely tested on line at the artist's website!