Page 45 Review by Stephen
Beautiful, beautiful, album-sized book following a day in the life of a tiger.
And you know how David Attenborough can get all rip, tear, gouge, growl and predatorial on your Sunday evening ass...? (I don't mean David personally, I mean his wildlife documentaries and the blood-thirsty cycle of life they portray.) This will too because a tiger does not spend its day perched on your window sill, idly gazing at your neighbours heaving heavy furniture into the removal van, furiously following a leaf buffeted by the breeze or hissing at next door's cat.
No.
A tiger wakes, stretches and yawns (which is perfectly good manners if alone in the jungle and not listening to yet another of your lame holiday anecdotes), then immediately sets off in search of a snack. And, once again, that doesn't mean pit-pattering down your carpeted stairs to the kitchen-floor cat bowl which you have filled to the brim with prime pussy nom-noms.
No, it does not.
It means tearing the throat out of whatever poor poppet is closest, assuming it can catch it first.
It then means defending that kill from other top predators and I'm just trying to warn you that this will pull at your heart strings just as the carnivores within will be pulling at tendons, muscles, fat, cartilage and sinew. Tigers aren't invulnerable, either.
I have but one problem with this silent scenario in that there is - just occasionally and in this specific context - a wee bit too much anthropomorphism for my taste. As in, any at all: in this context there should be none. GON is burlesque so that's perfectly fine. Here it shatters the illusion and kills the mood but the effects are mercifully brief.
Instead the rain, it will pour down. Lightning will strike, flamingos will fly and an owl will stir. There will be snail sex as well. Mmmm!
I don't even need animals; the landscapes alone are to die for.
This is as lithe as lithe can be then - OMG! - sketch pages, folks! Just one look at the jaws and the haunches will show you that Bertolucci knows how these beasts are put together.
It is ridiculous that there aren't more graphic novels which offer themselves up to the nature-loving rather than obsessing about the human condition (which is worth exploring) or hitting each other in the face with guns (not).
I will leave you with a reminder that THE RIVER exists.
