I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey
| I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey | |
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| Category: Graphic Novels | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A nefarious cat spills all in these bizarre-seeming pages. But while they seem bizarre, everything is delivered perfectly straight, very sensibly and at times quite cleverly. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 144 | Date: August 2014 |
| Publisher: Oni Press | |
| ISBN: 9781620101391 | |
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Meet Burma. Allison Breaking, blogger and journalist behind the Breaking News website is about to, for she's accepted his giant wage packet to ghost write his memoirs. She's been told to expect the unexpected as regards his looks, but she is shocked to find that Burma is in fact the world's only talking cat, and that he has not one but nine lives to talk about. The past eight were full of a lot of evil, sin and death – but at least he's coming clean now, right?
We've had comic books before now where the whole world of noir crime has been represented in animal form, but I'm unaware of one where the cat is set so firmly in the world of humans. Allison and her host/friend are given a lot of time to be real characters – bickering over what to drink at breakfast, doubting their sanity when confronted with a talking moggie, but Burma fits perfectly well on the same page – parading around his mansion with his butler Cardiff, and regaling the girls with his pasts.
It's a bit of a shame the pasts aren't that great when all is said and done. He seems to have been a master of disguise, and around for four thousand years, ever since he decided he could become one of the Egyptian pantheon of gods. He speaks of Elizabethan time, Sherlock Holmes inspirations and a whole lot more here, but while the flashbacks are given the full visual treatment of different colour palettes, etc, they don't always end up going anywhere, where you feel – especially with the episodic feel of comix – they certainly could have done. I'm reminded of Bill Willingham's House of Mystery series, where everyone has a short story, that always ends (somehow) then the main plot gets on with itself.
Also, as regards the script, it is a pudding of cross-Atlantic references; the English woman talking about blocks of streets and buildings in a way the American one doesn't seem to. Bringing Allison in from the US seems like a nudge of a wet nose towards a Hollywood adapter. But it manages to be clever at times – it certainly tries the multiple-strand narrative late on, with a damaged agent's story juxtaposed with the main plotline. The artwork is perhaps superior, however – to repeat, Burma looks great in his world and ours, and from feline character study to busy looks at busy London streets, the pages, while being very plainly gridded and blocky apart from just a rare few exceptions in layout, are very attractive.
On the whole, then, these pages provide glimpses at a great story mythos that might have gone further – I'm sure someone could have extended the whole thing to a trilogy, given the amount that is going on. It wouldn't have taken much – and it wouldn't have taken much for this book to have left 'good' behind for 'very good', but it is mighty close. A cat's whisker, you might say.
I must thank the publisher for my review copy. We're going to shelve it next to The Genius Factor: How to Capture an Invisible Cat by Paul Tobin.
The series starting with Grandville by Bryan Talbot has some great criminal animals - or is it animal criminals?
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You can read more book reviews or buy I Was the Cat by Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey at Amazon.com.
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