Cages by Dave McKean

It's high time I wrote about this book.

Cages by Dave McKean is one of my favorite comic books of all time. It was initially put as a 10-issue mini-series from 1990-1996. The first 7 issues were published by Tundra, with the last 3 books put out by Kitchen Sink. The books were collected into a hardcover graphic novel in 1998. It has been re-issued several times since then in both paperback and hardcover. This is my mostly spoiler-free revisiting of the book.

A Bit About Dave

Dave McKean is an annoyingly talented artist. He’s an accomplished painter, filmmaker, and musician who has directed 3 feature-length films, created numerous album covers for bands the likes of Skinny Puppy and the Counting Crows, and worked on a plethora of comic books. He is probably most well known for his collaborations with writer Neil Gaiman. They worked together on books such as Violent Cases, Signal To Noise, Black Orchid, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. McKean also contributed all of the covers to Gaiman’s celebrated Sandman series.

How I Discovered Cages

I was initially introduced to Dave’s work through the Sandman covers. They were like nothing else on the market at the time. Most comics of the era featured shiny foil holographic superheroes with 90000 pouches and biceps the size of a house. McKean’s covers were different. They were collaged, painted, photoshopped, and abstract. Mysterious and sometimes vague. The titular character of Sandman was almost never featured on the cover. I was mesmerized by them from the get-go.

So when I saw the collected Cages at my local comic shop in 1998 I immediately bought it. The book was shrink-wrapped, so I didn’t have a chance to thumb through it before purchasing it. I picked it up mainly because I assumed the art would be similar in style to the Sandman covers. I expected the writing to be, well, horrible. It turns out I was wrong about both assumptions.

The Art

I was a bit shocked when I first opened the book and thumbed through it. The artwork was nothing like what I had seen before from McKean’s. The pages featured 2 color ink drawings on a 9-panel grid. Gestural. Simple. Lean. There were a few fully painted pages, sure. And a few photo collages are thrown in for good measure. But mostly it’s fairly traditional.  Oh, and it’s mainly talking heads. There aren’t really a lot of action sequences.

But.

The book is gorgeous. Once I sat down and really studied the art I came to appreciate its beauty. It’s McKean stripped down to the essentials. The line work is masterful. His figures are fluid and lean. Th de facial expressions are expressive and dynamic. The combination of black and light blue inks let the story really shine. Panel transitions are damned near flawless. You’re never lost or confused, even when Dave utilizes abstraction as a narrative device. And when he does implement other media such as painting or photos, it’s relevant to the tale he’s telling.

The Story

Okay, perhaps ‘story’ isn’t the right word. Maybe ‘meandering work of fiction’ is more accurate. The book begins with several unique creation myths. Parables. Accounts of humanity overcoming its gods. Of vengeful gods wiping out worlds and starting over. It then transitions to the story of Leo Sabarsky, a creatively blocked artist who moves into an apartment building full of eccentric tenants.

The majority of the graphic work is dedicated to Leo’s interactions with said inhabitants. People wander in and out of the story as they would in real life. Characters come. Characters go. One chapter is about an elderly tenant pining for her lost husband. Another deals with Angel, a jazz musician who lives in the building. Several chapters are dedicated to Jonathan Rush, a homebound author who wrote a book called, you guessed it, Cages. While seemingly random and inconsequential at first, the yarns of these characters’ lives eventually wind together to tell a cohesive story. Oh, and it’s also about a cat. A black cat.

Themes

The concept of creation plays a big part in this book, both on a grand scale and on a more personal level. It’s about making art. It’s about life. About change. And destruction. And starting over. Repeating cycles.

It’s also about cages, both physical and metaphorical. People finding themselves trapped in their routines, in their day-to-day lives, in mundanity. Fear of change keeps folks locked up in their own mental prisons. Oh, and there are physical cages as well. An apartment that serves as a jail and a birdcage inhabited by a foul-mouthed parrot.

Censorship and the suppression of ideas also come into play in the story. The character of Jonathan Rush serves as a stand-in for Salman Rushdie. Rushdie had recently completed The Satanic Verses and was under a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini ordered Rushdie to be put to death due to the ‘blasphemous’ ideas espoused in said book. Rush is living in fear due to similar death threats issued because of what he wrote in the fictional book Cages.

The book also deals with religion and the nature of god. Does one create one’s own god? Is there a higher power? Angel, an aptly named jazz musician in the graphic novel, may or may not be a supernatural being. McKean portrays him as as being all-knowing and mysterious. Unknowable.

My Thoughts

This book reads like freeform jazz. Themes weave in and out. storylines fade and come back. It’s sometimes difficult to digest. At other points, it’s easy to breeze through pages quickly. Not everything is wrapped up in a neat little package. Plot points dangle. Some elements are left unresolved. It doesn’t read like a traditional comic book. I love it.

I find myself returning to Cages every few years. Each time I reread it I get something new out of it. It’s the type of art that lingers with you. Kind of a brain worm. I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t want to get it out of my head. I want to make art. I want to give up on making art because I’ll never be as good as Dave. I want to write. I never want to pick up a pen because, again, Dave. Damn you, Dave.

Cages is good. Very, very good. It’s one of my favorite comics of all time.

Do I recommend it to everyone? No. If your taste in comic books veers towards traditional superhero comics and you never venture outside of that genre, this book probably isn’t for you. Or if you only like stories where everything is neatly resolved at the end then don’t read Cages.

However, if you’re looking for something different. Something that at times borders on profound, give Cages a try.

You can buy it at this link here: https://amzn.to/3NRS3c2

Note, that’s an affiliate link. If you buy the book through it I make something like $0.08.

Or, if you’d prefer to watch me ramble on about Cages, you can watch a youtube video I made about it here: Youtube video

Minor Nitpicks

Yeah, I’m wrapping this article up with things that bug me a little. While Cages is fantastic, it’s not perfect.

Some of the dialogue doesn’t sit well with me. A few characters ‘speak’ with phonetic spelling that are meant to represent accents. This doesn’t work for me. It comes across as jarring and takes me out of the story every time.

Also, some of the photo collage / photoshopped images haven’t aged particularly well. They look a bit dated.

Okay, that’s all, Other than those minor complaints I really enjoy the book.

Have you read Cages? What do you think of it? Let me know in the comments.