The
Barron Storey story in ENDLESS NIGHTS came today in colour photocopies. It's called
15 Portraits of Despair, and is a strange mixture of things that form fifteen portraits of Despair: some portraits are short stories, some are almost poems, and one portrait consists of several examination questions, and I was worried that it would be impenetrable or pretentious or something. Instead, the combination of Barron's gorgeous, imaginative art and the text make this one of the darkest and most accessible things I've ever had a hand in creating. Dave McKean laid it out and did the typography, and deserves a lot of the credit for making it so readable and beautiful.
That's why comics are magic -- because I can read this thing I wrote and go "This is so amazing!" I wrote it, but the finished thing needed Barron to paint and draw and create and Dave to put it together.
I may write for another hundred years, but I'll never read a prose story I've written with that sense of bemused, parental delight.
