Thomas Ott - Dead End torrent

'Dead End'

Fantagraphics Books, 2003, 48 pages

By Thomas Ott

The second book from Europe's master of modern wordless horror.

Dead End is Ott's second US release, following hot on the heels of early 2002's Greetings from Hellville. Like Hellville, Dead End consists of Ott's trademark storytelling - wordless, stark, black-and-white scratchboard horror stories with twist endings, rendered beautifully with fish eye perspectives that create a vertiginous anxiety. Parts Twilight Zone, O Henry, and Kafka, Ott's work evokes a visual history of literary suspense and horror - it reads like Dante's Inferno done as an issue of Tales from the Crypt, drawn by original Inferno illustrator Gustave Doré.

The two stories In Dead End focus literally and figuratively on the circle. In the first short story, entitled 'The Millionaires', a mysterious suitcase of money creates a cycle of death spurred by greed and lust; yes, another contemporary-updating of the tried 'Monkey's Paw' variety' but in Ott's inimitable hands the story becomes less a morality play for children than a menacing reality check for adults. 'Washing Day', the collection's second story, follows the path of an assassin on the trail of a former magician - the assassin quickly learns that there are perils in following a white rabbit.