"Not your standard spookshow, but rather a surreal, grotesque Victorian creep-out, Hans Rickheit's 2009 Squirrel Machine introduces us to the world of William and Edward Topor, brothers with a penchant for exploring the otherworldly bowels of their disturbing, maze-like mansion, when not making musical instruments and other devices out of animal parts. Rickheit's detailed black and white illustrations provide the unforgettable backdrop to his ultimately tragic and gruesome tale." – Rue Morgue
"This carefully constructed tale… strikes me as being one of the few original works of art that I’ve seen published in North America over the last two decades, on a par with the better work of Dan Clowes or Charles Burns. … This is not a tale for the squeamish nor is it a tale for the literal-minded; it is very much a bravura performance in the tradition of Surrealism, or Fantastic Art, or even Symbolism… In short, strongly recommended!" – Mahendra Singh
"[The Squirrel Machine is a] darkly disturbing, brilliantly drawn story… B&W pen and ink drawings elucidate complex machines and Victorian-era architecture in baroque detail, while surrealist imaginings take turns for the truly repugnant. Sexual perversion, putrefaction and serial-killer style artworks are all ornately portrayed, as are the buildings, shops, horse-drawn carriages and crumbling mansions of a 19th-century small town. The story, while told primarily in pictures, includes a stilted and formal dialogue that only adds to the perversity. … Though not for the faint of heart, this obscure tale will offer rich rewards to the right kind of reader, one who appreciates grotesque horror, angry mobs and the creative explosion of a repressed Victorian sexuality." – Publishers Weekly
"…[T]he velvety ease of the narrative and the facile blend of sexual, familial and natural intimacies on display suggest one of those steps forward with which the comics medium has been blessed over and over again this past decade. One falls through The Squirrel Machine as much as reads it, and the collection of feelings it imparts is as much due to the clarity of its narrative as it is the horror show that occasionally surges toward the reader from some deep place in Rickheit's mind, righteous and angry and wet." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
The Squirrel Machine (Softcover Edition)
by Hans Rickheit
192-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-646-1
Available now! Click the thumbnails for larger versions; get more info, see more previews and pre-order your copy here: