The darkness and the art of David Lloyd

The encounter between a man and his wife, turned into a vampire, overnight and temptations of recrimination against the indifference of the neighborhood. The invocation of a demon by a novice witch greedy. The story of fascination, horror and death of a man lost in the fog. The vicissitudes of an astronaut in his space travel and his strange visit to the planet Paris. Reminiscences of a blind man, lost in eternal darkness, on his past life next to his dead wife. The reflections of a man waiting for the big death in a world that no more children are born. The claustrophobic story of a couple who discover the foundations of an old house next to his whose reflection remains beyond memory. The review of the events that led a man to jail after years of preparing a particularly despicable crime. The meeting of two kindred souls condemned to be understood through a forum of lovers on the net. The love story beyond death told by a medium cursed by his gift of seeing all the ghosts of the city of Los Angeles.
These are broadly the stories that lie took Dark Matter, a luxurious collection of short stories that have a common denominator, the British artist David Lloyd. The title refers both to the general condition of virtually all the stories, set in the scary or fantastic worlds of classical publications of short stories, and the nature of this hitherto unpublished material in our country, either because they are stories learning or published in English and American magazines that lack of distribution outside those countries. This volume provides a unique opportunity for anyone who enjoys the art of David Lloyd, it will be able to read stories that appeared in magazines including Negative Burn (Caliber Press), Tales of Terror and Alien Encounters (Eclipse Comics), Aargh! (Mad Love), A1 (Atomeka Press), Dark Horse Presents (Dark Horse) or Heavy Metal (Metal Mammoth Inc). Or what is the same, some of the best independent publications where the authors were able to give more free rein to your creative needs.
If the new material recovery is not enough incentive, David Lloyd texts that accompany each story itself should be. Framing each story in his career speaks of the influences of each of them-some bordering on unconscious plagiarism or several years ahead of other stories-of how to address each of the artistic projects, their taste for experimentation with materials and techniques, how to face the market and the confidence of an author both in the evolution of his art as a way to do get to the publishers at first instance and the reader as the end of it. It involves a unique opportunity to peek behind the scenes editorial and art that are not always so bluntly exposed and meridian.
It is logical to be a diverse collection of material, conducted over several decades of work for various publications, the quality of the stories vary considerably. Thus, the stories Harpy, Gold Journal of the devil and a space traveler, all with full authorship Lloyd, have a script inexperienced and perhaps not everything atractico than might be desired. It is in the stories where they enter other writers and artists experiment with watered down or paint when the book level rises significantly. In terms of right would put Man in the Mist (with a screenplay by Robert Curran and Lloyd himself) and a lasting impression. The first narrative, a claustrophobic story set in a hazy and unreal city, is leading the reader toward the inevitable climax of a sick intelligent, while the second presents a story with film and literary remnants (Lloyd quotes Agatha Christie, but I think most evident in the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock) to capture a crime of passion is not so perfect.
The best part of the anthology belongs in my opinion the three writers whose works speak for themselves and provide a starting material very grateful. In Remembering Rene (written by Stephen Bissette) a blind man who lives alone with his guide dog in your apartment does not cease to remember his late wife, a presence that may be truer than he thinks. In just five pages tells a story of darkness and melancholy quite powerful that it deserves more than one reading. The Great Death (Peter Milligan) makes a intimate and oppressive narrative which shows us a world without hope, in which only the memory of the past away in the shadow of death that end in a world without children. Instead adapts a story by Ramsey Campbell and is one of the longest histories of the book, playing with the everyday life of a suburban setting and a particular relationship to go driving to the realm of the fantastic and unreal that will eventually suck the protagonists in an unknown world. Finally, and regaining the strength of the narrative sparingly in eight pages and written by Josef Rother, City of Ghosts tells a story close to The Sixth Sense with the final twist frighteningly logical but genuinely surprising to me.
The edition of 001 editions in hardcover and glossy paper, it may not be the best choice to capture the stories in black and white or sepia Lloyd, complete with a dossier on all the authors of the book, a volume final icing essential for fans of David Lloyd and to discover the voice of an author who is someone other than the guy who drew the character that became the model for the masks that both Anonymous and various protest movements have become popular. And watch out, only that, there is little ...