Gutsville #1 & 2

Posted by Graig on September 22, 2007

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Sometimes a concept can draw you in, utterly stimulate your imagination, and despite the actual quality, the power of the concept alone will form your attraction to it. Other times the story, the writing and/or the art will actually serve the concept, making it something much bigger, an actual work of ingeniousness, of quality that’s worth returning to and telling others about.

I was literally at the half-way mark through the first issue of Gutsville before I understood the concept (not the plot mind you, but the general conceit of the book). The dialogue of the book, you see, is written phonetically in sort of a modified old English/cockney and it takes a while for the brain to adjust, and the introductory text meant to explain away the set-up is similarly written (”Seven and fifty years ago, and one hundred, our forefathers cast off from a dryplace…”) and thus comprehension isn’t so immediate. As I said, it was the half-way point where I started to read and understand the dialogue fluently, and that’s also when I understood the premise.

157 years ago, group of colonials set sail from Britain towards Australia, never to arrive, instead they were swallowed by a great beast, wherein now we join their ancestors who have created a vital, if puritanically ruled, society inside the belly of the beast. Their religion is based on biblical story, but of Jonah, not Jesus, and as to be expected, there’s a class system firmly in place.

Now this is all set-up mind you, and not the story itself, which after two issues is revealing itself to be intriguingly complex, though hardly impenetrable. Albert Olyphant is an artist (in a town where any art is seen as pornography) and the son of the town’s rat catcher who has fallen victim to a serial killer. At his father’s funeral, at which he encountered his old flame, Emelia, who’s marrying into the town’s elite, but there’s an uprising in the works and Emelia will either be enlisted or rolled over. Albert, by birthright, is forced into the rat catcher role, where he discovers a family map that has directions to a previously undiscovered second stomach, and perhaps a way out. All of this is only interrupted by the sudden arrival of the host’s latest meal, a Russian submarine.

Through language alone, writer Si Spurrier demands investment, thankfully he has a wallop of a story and setting as a reward. The various threads weave around each other but don’t necessarily relate directly, except in the sense that it provides a rich view of the Gutsville society, its customs and laws, and the bizarre landscape they inhabit.

I picked primarily because of artist Frazer Irving, whose art has graced the pages of Seven Soldiers: Klarion and Silent War amongst others, wowing me with every single outing. His digitally crafted artwork manages both an airbrushed and watercolor feel simultaneously while not being decidedly either. His pacing and composition are always perfect, his color palette distinctly his own, his style even more so. No doubt the man has influences, but I’ll be damned if I can discern who they are. So distinctive his storytelling and figures are from the bulk of “mainstream” illustrators out there. Here he beautifully realizes the ugly setting of a monster’s innards, making it a vile place to exist, but placing his people at home in it (even if most rarely look completely comfortable in their surroundings). A spot of fantasy and horror illustration mixed with pilgrim-era costuming and aesthetics pulled off panel after panel after panel like I’m sure few artists could.

Easily the most surprising and intriguing book of the year. If you think you’ve seen everything, you honestly haven’t seen this before.

5 out of 5