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Taddei, Marco & Angelini, Simone – Short and Merciless Stories
If there’s one thing that has remained the same over my years of writing about comics, it’s my absolute abhorrence for spoilers of any kind. And yet, for the 8 stories in this volume, all I want more than anything is to talk about the endings and how brilliant each and every one of them is. I won’t, of course, but man is it tempting. The stories in here involve the circumstances behind the disappearance of a young woman, a man who wakes up one to discover that he is missing a head but somehow still living (and what he does about it), a man who is the only one to see plumes of smoke rising up from over the hills, the death of a solitary man and the life of a creature who remains in that house, the focus group tested message going out from a shady military group, the rules of hell and “living” in it on a day to day basis, a man with the remarkable gift to transform anything he sees into anything he wants and what he does with it, and Death itself giving an interview to promote an autobiography. Summarizing these stories like this may make them seem simple, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. There are layers to each of them, and good luck reading this without having at least a few of them stuck firmly in your mind, waiting to pop back into your consciousness. The art is perfectly suited to the writing and, even though I didn’t know about these two before reading this book, I really hope there’s more out there from them, as this book is absolutely captivating. And for only $12.99, it’s even a bit of a deal. For whatever it’s worth, this is one of my favorite books of the year. Buy it for yourself and see if I am correct! $12.99
