The Amphigorey Books by Edward Gorey (No. 43)

The Amphigorey Books (1972, 1975, 1983)

by Edward Gorey

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

The three volumes that collect more than three dozen individual books by Edward Gorey - Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Also - are such a bounty that it's difficult to imagine any comics fan finding them inessential. For close to five decades Gorey has been the dark side of the comics form to such exquisite effect that his name has become synonymous with an approach to cartooning that is both cerebral and disquieting.

Gorey's drawings, whether in the style of The Gilded Bat's relentless hatching or the sparsely adorned phrasing of The Lavender Leotard, carry with them the sense of great weight. The faux-Victorian stylings bring to the page a solemnity that Gorey can spin in a myriad of ways.

From the playfully scary (The Wuggly Ump) to the scarily perverse (The Curious Sofa), from the whimsically morbid (The Bug Book) to the morbidly whimsical (The Ghastlycrumb Tinies) Gorey catches a mood of innocence and dread better than any cartoonist before or after him.

Gorey would be a first rate illustrator if that were all that he did (and he does do that from time to time), but add on top of his drawing skills the fact that Gorey's books are undisputedly amongst the most literate comics to have found their way to the page (reread The Unstrung Harp, his first work, if you doubt me) and you end up with a most astonishing talent.

Gorey's changed publishers at a ferocious pace in the past and as a consequence most of his original books are almost impossible to find in print. But the Amphigorey collections rectify that problem admirably. Make no mistake: these books are essential reading.

FURTHER READING:

The Edward Gorey House

The New Yorker: Edward Gorey's Enigmatic World