Customer Reviews

Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

I ran into Barnaby Ward's work a year or two ago on his website, and absolutely fell in love with his drawings. I have an appreciation for many different art influences, and when I saw Ward's work I could notice a resemblance with both Japanese and European styles.

Ward is a very unique artist. He has a way to his work that makes looking at his illustrations awe inspiring. From giant underground waterworks to the most detailed and crazy hulking machines- it's just cool to see all the things he comes up with in his head.

Here's a look at the CONTENTS:
Sixteen Miles To Merricks -pg 006
Highbeernation- pg 129
Rooftops- pg 147
The Forest- pg 161
Assorted Illustrations & Sketches- pg 175
Acknowledgements- pg 207

Of course, the main story in the book is Sixteen Miles to Merricks. It's a great narrative about a man who finds a young woman in his apartment, and she takes him on a journey into a labyrinth beneath his house. You won't be quite sure what to expect until the ending! Some of the sequences are breathtaking.

The three other short stories are great as well, but they definitely lack the depth of Sixteen Miles. They're more eye candy than anything- at least in my opinion. Last, you'll be treated to some of the sketches and miscellaneous artwork Ward has compiled over the years, including his take on Alice in Wonderland.

Overall, this is a great compilation of works from Barnaby Ward. You should definitely support this artist and pick a copy up.

The story was wildly imaginative and uniquely
hip. The visuals have all the force of a lucid dream state. It felt
like something pulled from the reader's own subconscious. There was a
universal quality to the confusion of the winding subterranean
passages. I truly believe Barnaby Ward will be one of the next great
comic book artists.

This book is so awesome. Ward is amazing with atmosphere and scale, I was totally wrapped up in every environment, especially in the first story. Very huge and eerie. Made me think of "House of Leaves".

I've had a short attention span lately, but I finished the whole book in one sitting. His stories are just so out of the ordinary, I couldn't wait to see what strange things the characters would find around the next corner. I got worried when there was a dream sequence, but it was only about 2 pages long.

I also love his art! It's loose, but always satisfyingly defined, never too quick or sloppy. He uses black so deliciously. And his girls are not shy about their legs.

I'm always looking for new comics to devour, but I'm extremely picky about what I like. Sixteen Miles to Merricks and Other Works completely fits the bill.

At first flip-through you might be inclined to think the art (especially that of the characters) is too simplistic to be good, the beginning of the main story too stream-of-consciousness, but you would be fooled brilliantly! The story does this sort of narrative structure the justice it's usually lacking in other works. The character designs completely blew me away the further I read. I'm totally enamored with their style, expression and form (and I don't say this lightly). The juxtaposition of them on some fantastic, complex, textured, euro-style backgrounds is a match made in comics heaven. Even the lettering is spot on and completes the atmosphere.

But wait, there's more. Not only does the book give you the title story, but also three additional short stories, a collection of guest pin-ups, and a large section of artist illustrations. It's a satisfyingly thick collection. You will undoubtedly recommend it to friends.

First off, this is not an art book. It is mostly a black and white comic book with some color pages at the back by the artist and guest artists. At first I was a little dissapointed, but as I read it that feeling dissappeared. The stories are great, and the artwork is gental but affecting. The dream scape that the characters are going through is very captivating and you sometimes wish it was a movie.