Forbidden Planet NYC (840 Broadway @13th St.) will be hosting cartoonist Hans Rickheit this coming Thursday evening. Hans is the incredible talent behind Fantagraphics’ new graphic novel The Squirrel Machine.
AN ANACHRONISTIC PARABLE FOR THE CONVULSIVE ELITE
What is the squirrel machine? Is it a rodent ensnarement device? A mechanism for concealing one’s guarded harvest? An anachronistic fable? A meaningless diversion?
Set in a fictional 19th Century New England town, the narrative initially details the relationship and maturation of Edmund and William Torpor. But the two brothers quickly elicit the scorn and recrimination of an unamused public when they reveal their musical creations built from strange technologies and scavenged animal carcasses. Driven to seek a concealment for their aberrant activities, they make a startling discovery. Perhaps they will divine the mystery of the squirrel machine.
What is The Squirrel Machine?
• An immutably strange and haunting narrative that transcends known logics and presumptive dream-barriers;
• A distillation of subconscious beauty and inspired madness;
• A dangerous object for the incautious;
• A revelation for the undernourished crypto-seeker;
• The virgin caress of unconsummated apocalypse;
• The unspeakable thing that you always knew.It’s also the legendary obscurantist cartoonist Hans Rickheit’s most ambitious graphic novel to date. Exquisitely rendered, strange, and hauntingly beautiful, this evocative and enigmatic book will ensure the inquisitive reader a spleenful of cerebral serenity that will require vast quantities of mediocrity to banish from memory.
You can also check out this vid, a (sorta) behind the scenes preview of the book, and featuring an interview with the man himself:
So remember: FP. Thursday. October 1st. 6pm. Squirrel Machine. Be there.
