Review by Luke Williams
Kevin O’Neill (1953 – 2022) has been gone for four years now. He’s considered a “Marmite artist”: not clean, or conventional enough to be mainstream, but with an energy and spirit that few other artisits could muster. His characters ranged from amusing and ridiculous to grotesque and bizarre, often the stuff of nightmares.
For the past 20 plus years, O’Neill was probably most well known for his work with Alan Moore on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but his career goes back to the early 1970s, working as a bodger on IPCs humour titles to stellar runs on 2000AD, the masterful Marshal Law: Fear & Loathing, and the underappreciated Metalzoic. Perhaps most notoriously, he was the only artist in history to have his work banned by America’s Comics Code Authority, the now defunct industry self censorship scheme.
(In 1986, the CCA refused to approve a Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual No. 2 story, written by Alan Moore, drawn by O’Neill.When DC Comics editors inquired about changes needed for approval, the Authority stated that O’Neill’s “entire style” was objectionable and demonic, and that no changes to specific panels would make it acceptable. DC published the book without CCA approval).
Toward the end of his life, O’Neill chose to plough his energy into his own work, and it’s this work that is celebrated with Silent Pictures, published by Knockabout Comics.
As the name suggests these two beautiful slip cased hardback books are wordless. The first book, Feartreland, set in what appears to be a twisted pantomime world, is pretty much plotless, the players are intent on causing each other as much harm as possible, like the most violent Tom & Jerry cartoons, or Ken Reid’s characters on acid. It’s a volume of cartoon acts of violence, which would arguably be considered gratuitous, but are so beautifully portrayed by O’Neill you could imagine him grinning from ear to at his drawing board as he created them.
The second volume, The Balaclava Kid, is tighter and more coherent as a story, but with the same fizzing energy, humour and inventiveness. O’Neill’s friend and co-creator Alan Moore provides the introductions for the volumes and suggests that this latter volume is semi-autobiographical, with a heavy fantasy element. What the two perhaps lack in actual story they more than make up for in epitomising the expressiveness and inventiveness of O’Neill’s work.
Moore’s typically verbose, dense, but extremely touching introductions give context to the work presented and speculate as to what was going through the creator’s mind as he drew these pages; although if you are of advancing years and deteriorating eyesight, you may need a magnifying glass to read the miniscule text.
Don’t expect an insightful or particularly deep read, but do expect a beautiful package and art from a true original. A suitable capstone for a wildly inventive career.
Luke Williams
• Copies of Silent Pictures are available from both Knockabout’s retail website, and Gosh! Comics of London, online and in store
• On downthetubes: In Memoriam: Comic Artist Kevin O’Neill 1953 – 2022
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Brought up on a diet of Commando, British Boys Annuals and Asterix, Lucas Williams’s day job limits his reading time. Luckily for everyone else this also restricts his writing time.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Books, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Features, Reviews
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