Mr. Punch

The essence of memory is that we rarely get right to the heart of the matter. Something floats up into our thoughts and teases out a recollection. If that recollection has an emotion attached, then we are pulled down deeper towards other memories. As those memories gather about us, the world is recreated for us as it once was. Or at least how we saw it once upon a time. Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean’s MR. PUNCH is all about how we access memory. The story starts with shallow memories, brief bits about his grandparents. Each round of memories adds depth, and soon they begin to connect. There is a wonderful sense of tension built up as the story progresses. The traditional puppet show of Punch & Judy is retold in various forms and show more fragments--working like memory does in bits and pieces. The puppet show acts like a mirror of the memory that we are eventually being drawn toward. The wonderful illustrations are dark like half remembered images and many contain bits of this and that tossed together like disorganized thoughts. The images become more detailed and tangible as we get deeper but seldom is there anything particularly bright to hang hope on. There is no hope in memory, they are what they are. We can glean some understanding, but must be concerned about them taking over our lives—a point the book makes very well. MR. PUNCH does not seem like much at first and it knows this. Sparse at the dialogue keeps you moving until it knows it has you hooked. This is a wonderful creation starting like a light mist until by the end it has become an emotional downpour. show less

Childhood is a dim, misty country. Facts and faces, people and places all flit in and out of the streetlight of memory, all mediated by the prism of emotion. Neil Gaiman's Mr Punch captures that feeling exactly, through the eyes of a small boy -- Neil himself -- and it feels authentic because it is essentially autobiographical, and because it also has a sense of place without being being too specific.

Dave McKean's atmospheric artwork matches young Neil's perspective in the 70s, ferried to and around Southsea in Portsmouth to stay with grandparents and where he encounters other strange relatives and their associates. Self and space, adults and events are presented in a kaleidoscopic fashion that mirrors those confusing years when adults show more have control, violence may be around the corner and nothing truly makes sense, however much you try to fathom it out.

Boyhood memories link back to the inherent violence of the Punch & Judy puppet theatre, featuring as it does domestic abuse, criminal acts and premeditated murder. The acts of the traditional glove puppets are darker than the action in, say, a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and one always wonders at the play's suitability for children, but it was long a mainstay of seaside attractions and may still occasionally feature during family summer beach holidays.

One of Neil's grandfather's runs a rundown seaside arcade, with slot machines, a fortune teller, a maze of mirrors, a mermaid in a tank and a menagerie of parrots. But there are dark secrets in the family history, mysteries that are too insubstantial for the boy to grasp, and whispers of this history are soon bound up with the Punch and Judy man and his macabre comedy-cum-tragedy. Punch, his battered wife Judy, the baby, the law and other puppets become inextricable from people the boy meets, their lives or roles marching in parallel with the personnel in the play.

The sombre colours and noir-ish mixed media illustrations belie one's expectations of days spent at a seaside resort, and the fonts have been carefully created to perhaps suggest journal entries, in keeping with the style of a memoir. While the story can stand perfectly well on its own (or as a radio drama or audio book), being combined with a gallery of outline drawings, paintings and photographs (both sepia-tinged and colour) of models, puppets and seascapes adds immeasurably to its impact.

And the spookiest thing is that the puppets at times seem more real than the people. After a quarter-century this graphic novel has lost none of its power to disturb, and it does it deliciously. As somebody or other is wont to say, That's the way to do it! show less

Are half of Goodreads on LSD?

Browsing through these reviews, the first one I read describes this book as "Creepy and sinister". Another claims it is "Really morbid". Several mention the words "Disturbing" and "Terrifying", someone calls it "Darker than dark, even by Vertigo standards" and one person was actually so upset by the whole thing that they just wrote "Fuck you mr. Geiman!".

And it all makes me wonder if they have read another book, or if they are on heavy medication? Because the one I read was just a cute little story about a man thinking back at a puppet-show he saw in his youth. That's it! There's no creepiness, nothing is sinister, not one morbid second, and the whole thing is about as disturbing and terrifying as an show more instruction manual on how to cook noodles.

I wouldn't say it's a bad book, but it's not that good either. It's just a nostalgic trip back to the mind of an impressionable boy, and the only thing about it that's remotely scary, is whatever sheltered lives anyone must have lived, if this is what accounts for being "Terrifying". show less

A while back, Rose posted a request on BookLikes for amusement park/theme park book recommendations, and this was one of mine. I hadn't read it in years, so I figured a reread was in order.

The title is long, so, from here on out, I'll just refer to it as Mr. Punch. The narrator of Mr. Punch is an adult recalling his childhood, in particular an extended period of time he spent with his grandfather, his father's father, before the birth of his younger sister. When he was a boy, those were just days he spent at his grandfather's arcade, hearing the mermaid sing and learning about Punch and Judy shows from Professor Swatchell. As an adult, those memories took on greater significance, because of disturbing things they revealed, or almost show more revealed, about the narrator's past and his family.

Although the Narrator-As-Child doesn't understand everything that's going on and isn't concerned with certain details, it's easy enough for readers to decipher the general situation. The narrator's grandfather cheated on his wife with the lady who played the mermaid at his arcade. That lady became pregnant and was convinced she was loved and would be supported. Various Punch stories and details about the show's history act as a sinister backdrop to all of this.

This graphic novel is not going to work for everyone. It's slow and reflective. The mixed media artwork is dark, shadowy, and sometimes confusing. The bulk of the text is done in a faux handwriting font, often white on black, that can be kind of annoying to read, although it fits with the artwork better than I imagine anything else would have.

One of the reasons this book works so well for me is that I can connect with it on a personal level. As far as I know, the past couple generations of my family don't have secrets that are quite as dark as the narrator's family's secrets, but they do have secrets. The messages about the way we experienced our childhoods versus the way we remember those experiences as adults resonates with me.

On a more surface level, I found the details about Punch and Judy stories and the history of the shows to be fascinating. Whether they're all true or not, I don't know, but they at least sound like they could be.

I vaguely remember attending a few shows when I was a kid in Germany, although I don't recall them being nearly as creepy-looking as the ones in this book. I used to own a set of hand-puppets, cheap rubber and cloth things, of all the basic characters. My favorite was the crocodile, so I got a kick out of the bit in the book that was specifically about that character.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

A man recalls his six year-old self, a summer that has stuck in his memory for years with hazy visions of his grandfather's failing amusement arcade. It was that year that the boy met Mr Punch, the puppet who entertains audiences by murdering his baby, wife, a policeman and then the judge. The boy doesn't find Punch's antics funny, in fact he's terrified, but when his grandfather allows a Punch show to open in his arcade as a last ditch effort to stay in business, the boy has no choice but to see more of Mr Punch.
I love Punch and Judy. They're creepy, and the photos used in this GN are collaged with drawings and produce some eerie results. There are some side stories about the various family members, so it's almost a short story.

Read this book somewhere well-lit. Shady characters, dark images, and the subconscious’ shadows meld into a story that alternates between reality and nightmare.
The narrator recalls a summer of his youth spent with his grandparents at his grandfather’s failing seaside arcade, where he meets a mysterious Punch and Judy professor. Gaiman expertly weaves the narrator’s evasion with the child’s uncertainty about the strange characters around him. Combined with the sinister nature of the Punch and Judy show, the frightening setting of the dilapidated amusement park, and the rainy environment, this book evokes an uneasy but mesmerizing response.
Dave McKean’s surreal illustrations are reminiscent of Quay Brothers films and lend to show more the story’s distorted atmosphere with eerie warped images of rusty, carved and textured sculptures and darkly colored drawings overlaid with illegible text. show less

Graphic novels are really not my thing. But this is the first one I've read that *felt* more like an illustrated novel than a comic book. Or at least, illustrated short story. It might be because this one has as much narrative structure as dialogue and very little action, so the artwork seemed more for building atmosphere and mimicking a sort of stop-motion movie drama, like extreme closeups, rather than depicting characters in action with voice bubbles over their heads.

The artwork is strange but compelling. The story is strange but compelling. And the ending is... unsatisfactorily unresolved.

Paperback, picked up on a whim at a Friends of the Library sale, because the author is Neil Gaiman.

I read this for the 24 Festive Tasks 2019 show more for Door 2 Japanese Culture Day (Nov. 3): Read a graphic novel or a book set in a school or academic setting. show less