I read Greg Ruth's graphic novel Sudden Gravity this week on a plane and I'm still reeling from it. It's a deeply surreal story about the apocalypse coming to a giant, grim hospital modelled on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. The storyline is un-summarizable in the way that, say, Twin Peaks was. And as with Twin Peaks, the thing that makes this book work is the spooky, overarching feel, something that comes from the writing and especially from the stupendous, stark, haunting black-and-white artwork. I was given this book by Shawna Gore, an editor at Dark Horse, who declared Greg Ruth to be her favorite artist working in the field, and I'm inclined to agree. There is so much to set your skin a-crawl and keep you turning the pages in Ruth's illustration. It's a fast read — I put it away in less than an hour — but it's a slow burn. I keep returning to those illustrations in my mind.
