Pretty Pictures

Actually, wasn't going post today but jenn see said she hadn't read Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine and I thought...well, I'll let the pictures do the talking. (So expect a slow load.)

I first heard about these books in an introduction by Roger Zelazny of Neil Gaiman's collected Books of Magic, in which Zelazny lauds Bantock for giving a different spin to the age-old story of star-crossed lovers.

To wit, Griffin and Sabine is a trio of graphic books (Griffin and Sabine, Sabine's Notebook, and The Golden Mean) detailing the surreal romance between two people. Griffin Moss is a postcard designer in London. Sabine Strohem is an illustrator of stamps living on an island in the South Pacific. The two are worlds apart... until Griffin receives a postcard from Sabine revealing that she knows all kinds of things about his life and work as she can somehow share his soul from afar.

They start exchanging love letters but mysteries remain. Why can Sabine only see Griffin's artwork through his eyes but nothing else? Are they literally worlds apart or are there more metaphysical concerns? And who is the mysterious stranger who wants to know the details of their strange link?

"You're a figment of my imagination," Griffin accuses Sabine. "You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened," Sabine replies.

This is a story that's creepy, surreal, at times sentimental and yet haunting: all with impressive-looking and lovely art. The books themselves literally contain the correspondence between the two characters: postcards, front and back, and letters in envelopes pasted into the book, which the reader must open and read.

A definite reading experience: if not for the story, at least for the art.

(I must admit that I haven't read the sequel to these books-- i.e. The Gryphon, Morningstar, and Alexandria-- but then, I'm kind of wary of sequels. Why ruin a good thing, right?)