This is a graphic novel with no pictures. Readers are free to create the images described in the text in whatever style they like. There’s a mystery, lots of stuff about cartoons and comics history, romance, adventure, drama, and plenty of humor.l
The Dead Cartoonist is at once a social commentary and a story of loyalty and intrigue that will delight a wide audience. It belongs on any fiction shelf, but ideally should appear alongside collections strong in comic strip history and culture.
Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Reviewr
Great comic strips sometimes come from earnest but neurotic philosophers (Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts) or seething monsters (Al Capp, L’il Abner). But the creators are seldom seen or talked about by their readers. Read the one or two or three panels of the cartoon, chuckle, don’t, move on to the next Skittle in your day.
“The Dead Cartoonist” is fabulously successful but emotionally disturbed comic strip creator Milton Morey. Or maybe it’s Nate Thurringer, whose quirky strip barely rates a blip in the comics world.
By a stroke of chance, Nate is present when Morey’s family finds out he has been kidnapped. Nate, accompanied by Morey’s Romanian lover, Crina Vraca, sets off on a rescue mission from the suburbs of America to the French Riviera, across Spain and finally to Hollywood.
A definite escape read, in more ways than one, that kept this reader entertained. Cartoons are all about the humorous side of life, or looking at like with a slightly different angle, and this story definitely fits the bill.