A friendly correspondent notified me today of this very interesting blog, The Savage Critics, where today's posting offers a critical overview of Stephen R. Bissette's TABOO #2, published back in 1989.This issue included -- among other notable things -- "Sweet Nothings," a deliberately haunting little story by me and illustrated by my sister from another mother, Simonida Perica-Uth. We were venturing out into new realms with this story, certainly in the way it was illustrated (collages of xeroxed photos of Egyptian tombs and monuments), but also in the way the story was told. My literary style has always been... well, stylized, and I wanted to tell this story and others that might have followed in a deliberately spare manner that would seem to resonate down through the ages. Simo and I did a second, even more ambitious story in the same manner, "Clipped Wings," but what with the early demise of TABOO, it was never published. It didn't quite seem to belong anywhere else.
I don't believe I've ever read any printed assessment of the work Simo and I did together before now, but I treasure the memory of Steve telling me, at the time of its publication, that future FROM HELL artist Eddie Campbell, while staying with him, had expressed the feeling that it might be the most adult story he'd ever read up to that time in the comics form.
Copies of this classic issue are still available here at Steve Bissette's Online Emporium.
