Name: Violent Cases
ISBN: 9781569717998

Neil Gaiman

Dave McKean

This ISBN is sold out. The new printing is 1-56971-606-4

Violent Cases

Sarah Sammis

Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman was his first collaboration with Dave McKean. It's a short graphic novel about boy hood memories of being treated by Al Capone's osteopath.

As with so many of Gaiman's graphic novels this is a story about story telling and faulty memories. Much of the plot is interrupted with asides from the now adult protagonist as he rethinks pieces of the story or admits to gaps in his memory.

Near the end of the novel there is an especially creepy and memorable scene that compares the violence of Al Capone as he single handedly bashes in the brains of a group of men who have slighted him to the petty squabbles that arise during a typical game of musical chairs.

What all my recent reads of Gaiman and McKean collaborations have told me is that I am guaranteed to enjoy anything they've worked on together.

Before The Sandman, there was Violent Cases, the first teaming of multi award-winning writer Neil Gaiman and innovative artist Dave McKean. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this seminal work, Violent Cases is being re-issued in a hardcover edition of one of the most influential and groundbreaking graphic novels of all time. A sensitive and ingenious work, Violent Cases reveals the often murky nexus between memory and imagination through the narrator's cloudy childhood remembrance of a visit to Al Capone's osteopath -- and the impact of his seedy stories on an impressionable youth.