The Spiral Cage [Paperback]

Al Davison (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Born with severe spina bifida, doctors considered Al Davison a hopeless case, condemned to the 'spiral cage' of his own DNA. In Al's own words and pictures, this book movingly portrays his struggle to overcome 'disability' and the prejudice that surrounds it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Spiral Cage is an important addition to the ranks of comic books that strive to break out of the conventions of the genre. --Alan Moore

Al Davison deserves credit for writing the most moving tale of triumph without falsely enhancing his heroic struggle, or demonizing his life's troubles. I cannot recommend this enough. It is flat out awesome. --Alex Ness, PopThought.com

Davison smashes misconceptions on every page, and he does so in a highly readable and moving manner. --Alan David Doane, ComicBookGalaxy.com

From the Inside Flap

The first time that I saw the work you are about to read, it was in colour. Dave Gibbons and myself, attending London’s Society of Strip Illustrators to talk about our experiences creating Watchmen, found ourselves talking to Al Davison and cooing over the hand-coloured version of The Spiral Cage that he was prevailed upon to show us. I would dwell at length upon the delicate hues and the sophisticated colour sensibilities that marked every page, except that I wouldn’t want anyone to get the impression that the work in question is any the less successful for being in black and white. It’s true that, dazzled by the iridescence of the first version I’d seen, I was somewhat apprehensive concerning the prospect of a monochrome interpretation. Such doubts however, vanished with my first glimpse of the volume in hand. If anything, the black and white presentation demonstrated even more ably the strength of Al’s artwork, sturdy and sensitive even without the cosmetic benefits of colour to enhance it. One thing I didn’t get a chance to do during that first, necessarily hurried overview was to actually read the thing, something I have since remedied more than a few times. In the course of those readings and re-readings I’ve come across a further pleasant revelation: not only does the art stand up perfectly without the exquisite colouring, but the storytelling and substance of The Spiral Cage is a match for either.

Let me elaborate upon that: To me, The Spiral Cage is an important work upon a couple of levels. Firstly, as the expression of a personal vision and personal experiences, it is clearly a work of the first water. I doubt I could read it without getting a very powerful sense of the protagonist’s situation and feelings. The way in which those feelings are articulated, and the tremendously uplifting sense of optimism that they engender would be a tribute to the power of even the most seasoned comics professional, and doubly so to an artist whose first published work is represented by the book in your hands.

Secondly, The Spiral Cage is an important addition to the ranks of comic books that strive to break out of the conventions of genre and establish a beach-head of work with genuine human worth and relevance. That Al Davison is a long-time comics fan is evident by the Batman costume his child protagonist is seen wearing. That he has chosen not to slavishly recreate the genre preferences of his childhood is equally evident, and should be applauded as such.

Many potentially good artists and writers, overjoyed to find themselves actually working in comics of any kind, allow themselves to become hidebound and institutionalized in the traditions of juvenile superhero comics, eventually becoming unable to imagine working in any other area. Speaking as someone who has worked fairly well within the tried and tested genres of superheroes and science-fiction and has reaped the obvious financial benefits of such a safe and conventional path, I have nothing but deepest admiration for those, like Al, who have had the courage to set their marques so far beyond the rigid perimeters of the comic book mainstream. Of course, the main risk of staking out such untrodden creative areas is a financial one; traditionally, a comic fan market weaned upon superheroes has been reluctant to try out any fare that varied too much from the diet that they were used to. I may be being optimistic, but this may not always be the case.

Comic fans themselves are changing, their tastes gradually widening. This year they can accept comics with superheroes so strange and different that they hardly seem to be superheroes at all. Next year, who knows? Perhaps the fan audience will actually be able to tolerate, en masse, the idea of comics without a single cape or mask in sight. Of course, the long-time traditional comic fan market is not the only audience we have to consider; I don’t know how the situation stands in America, but in this country comic shops have doubled or trebled their flow of customers over the last couple of years, largely due to the sudden attention being paid to comics by the media in the wake of Dark Knight, Maus, and so on. The trend would indicate that there exists out there an audience potentially twice as large as our existing one. More importantly, since this audience would seem not to have the same long-term grounding in conventional comic lore, it may be assumed that after a while they’ll get tired of seeing unusual slants upon the cliches of the superhero genre and start looking for more varied and sustaining fare. We’d better hope that such fare is there and available for them, otherwise they may simply wander away again, back to their VCRs and their Walkmans. In this last respect, it is the existence of books like The Spiral Cage that offers a real ray of hope for the future of the medium.

Beautifully drawn and written, expertly told, the story contained within these pages manages to talk about the things that many people still find it difficult to talk or think about, and do so in a way that is at once accessible, entertaining and elevating. By addressing the world upon the level of the all-too-human rather than that of the unreachably superhuman it manages to say something for all of us, able and otherwise, seemingly within our own bodies and circumstances; apparently locked forever within the inescapable spiral cage of our own DNA. Within the discipline of his craft and the patience of his work within these pages, Al Davison seems to have found a key to the lock of his own cage.

Try it. Who knows? Maybe it’ll fit you too.

ALAN MOORE

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Active Images (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974056715
• ISBN-13: 978-0974056715
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sequential Heart, March 7, 2004

By 

Tex (Hyde nr. Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spiral Cage (Paperback)

This is a landmark piece of literature and art combined; an autobiography executed as a graphic novel, and definitely one of the most important works in the comic book field.

It documents Als life from the day of his birth, and his refusal to allow the spina biffida he was born with, to dictate his life path. The reader is swept along on an odyssey as Al strives to walk, is bullied at school, finds a spiritual home through Buddhism and the martial arts, and meets the love of his life.

It's difficult to get hold of these days, but I would recommend this book to anyone. I normally buy comic books for entertainment and because each one teaches me something new about the sequential art artform.

This book taught me something new about life!

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor quality, September 28, 2011

By 

JohnJ "JohnJ" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Spiral Cage (Paperback)

This book was put together very cheaply . The glue fails in the binding causing some pages to fall out on the first or second read.
I needed it for my English class and by the time I was done with it all the pages were held in with staples.

5.0 out of 5 stars Discipline not 'Disability', February 25, 2004

By 

M Paskins (London England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spiral Cage (Paperback)

The Spiral Cage is the autobiography of the graphic and martial artist Al Davison. The story returns throughout to Al's struggle with a bout of ME, chronic viral fatigue, and spirals around to the other ways he's had to deal with prejudice and acute physical difficulty. He was born with Spina Bifida, was never expected to walk; faced skinheads, ignorant arrogant doctors and intellectuals, school bullies.

Reading a graphic novel, especially one told as masterfully as this one is, you come to forget that the whole thing is based upon repetitions: similar drawings appearing over and over again, relentlessly. The images establish a rhythm: your eye flicks from one to the next, registering the changes in posture, strength, seeing the main character's body not as something that can be easily described - as it might be in words - but as a being that has to be dealt with on its own terms, allowed to carry the story in its own way. The montages of prejudiced, angry faces (there's one terrifying bird-like school bully, his face clotted with prejudice), set against the precise sequences of martial arts work in front of the mirror, are like the mantra Al chants at one point to avoid a violent confrontation. They build up a sense of the way that an individual person's voice and breath and strength and skill can peacefully resist the circumstances which attempt to reduce him.

There are a variety of voices, many of them childlike, many of them lyrical. A book like this is a reminder that `disability' is as much the result of prejudice as of any difference in physical development. This book's technique and narrative are inseparable from each other - at the same time, they describe and perform the remarkable discipline and courage of their creator.