Customer Reviews

The Ticking

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Renee French, The Ticking (Top Shelf Productions, 2005)

I am sure there is someone out there-- in fact, I am sure there are a lot of someones out there-- who can read through The Ticking a few times and tell you all sorts of things about the subtext, the symbolism, and all sorts of other under-the-surface stuff about this book. I am not one of them. I'm just here to tell you that The Ticking is one of the flat-out oddest productions I have encountered in the universe of graphic literature.

Edison Steelhead's mother dies in childbirth. His father sees that Edison has inherited his own deformities, and sets about trying to get Edison plastic surgery to make him look more normal. Edison himself isn't sure about all this, and flees from the necessity of these confrontations into his career as an aspiring artist. Edison's father then brings home a sister for Edison-- Patrice, a chimpanzee, and Edison and Patrice begin down the road to siblinghood, one not smooth at the best of times. And that's just the beginning. Things get odder from there.

This is a book both amusing (how amusing you will find it depends largely on your capacity for appreciation of black humor) and horrifying, often in the same panel. French's panorama is the world of the deformed, but just as Katherine Dunn in Geek Love or Tod Browning in Freaks, French approaches her subjects with a warmth and humor that translates to the audience's ability to better relate to the book's subjects-- always a wonderful thing.

If the book has a problem, it's that it could have been longer. French's impressionist style is wonderful, and the holes that are left are done with an obvious sense of planning, but I'd still have liked to see a little more of... well, everything. The relationship between Patrice and Edison's father in particular stands out as not quite covered enough, but the Patrice-and-Edison scenes, some of the best in this always-strong book, are too few.

Great stuff. Highly recommended. ****

Rene french is an artist and visual poet who combines lines and shades to create a world of utter beauty surrounded by the ugliness of shadows. Her art is beautiful and the images will stay in your mind for days as you swirl with the meaning of the journey you undertake. The complexity and simplicity intertwine to leave you spell bound. Worth a read, worth a look, worth the risk if you've never had the pleasure of seeing Renee's work before.

As an artist and visual story teller myself; this is one of those exquisite books that I wish I had done. Telling a story with words and pictures requires a fine balance. Many very wonderful stories use text to highlight pictures or pictures to highlight text. Renee French has authored one of those extremely rare books where lines between text and image blur and the story becomes even more powerful as we touch it with our eyes and experience it rather than just reading it. It was after the third reading that I was finally able to go back and enjoy the book simply on the visual level. Each panel could be enjoyed on the levels of surface, texture, pattern, and craft. The mystery and seeming simplicity of the imagery can't help but draw one in.
There are many incredible illustrators, authors, and artists out there but very few succeed in creating a unique language with their work. Ms. French has. THE TICKING reaffirms our need for master storytelling, the experience of books, and the importance of the visual as language.

Renee French's book shows the beauty of the grotesque, but is it really grotesque? The ambigious pencil shading softens what could potentially be unnerving visuals, but her eye for cotton candy-like drawings brings out the beauty of Edison's Steelhead's life. Renee's drawing melts into my eyes and sweetens my sweet tooth for the poetry of comic.

ticking - A strong, tightly woven fabric of cotton or linen used to make pillow and mattress coverings.

Edison is weird and is fascinated with things just as strange as he is. He turns out to be well-adjusted as everyone else, except he has a chimp for a sister. That makes him cooler than most people. He ponders a way to change his life, his deformity, with a superficiality like a ticking...

I am a huge fan of Renee French. Since the day I purchased and was blown away by "Marbles in my Underpants" I've watched her stuff closely. I think she's a visionary. She seems to use a technique of sketching childlike drawings on paper with a pencil (that's it). Her themes mostly revolve around childhood isolation and a kind of sludgy, bottled-up sexual panic.

"The Ticking" traces the life of Edison Steelhead, a child born with a congenitally deformed head (just like dad's) who lives on a secluded island. Not a lot happens. We follow Edison through the years as his life progresses and the possiblity of plastic surgery looms ever-present.

It's really the tone of the drawings that grabs you. French has a way of drawing things that makes them literally seem to reach out and throttle you.

I think it's also important to note that Renee French's work can be approached in a few different ways. If you're looking for a strange avant-garde picture book that wraps you up in melancholy and shows you brand new sights: look no further.

But also, if you're just looking to be scared, to read something that will creep you out, this will do the trick. However, "The Ticking" doesn't have the same shock factor as "Marbles in My Underpants". It's more subdued and contemplative. There are some chilling moments, as when Edison's father introduces Edison to his "new sister", where the horror seems to lurch up out of some undefined place. But for the most part, this is pretty restrained.
If you're looking for something to frighten you, check out "Marbles in my Underpants", now THAT one is freaky.

The elegant perfection of this book can be read on its foil-stamped, cloth cover. From there things only improve.

A penetrating treatise on modern canoe paddling and not an unbeautiful description of software development in an unspecified language. The more astute interpretation is that The Ticking is simply a collection of extremely puerile scores for a weaponized euphonium. Ms. French gives her authoritative stand that "Gravity is to water containment as drawing is to l'eau couleur peinture ." (Witnessed by the municipal utilities district while gathering field data for non-towel oriented absorbent theory.)