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The Cage
First published in 1975, The Cage was a graphic novel before there was a name for the genre. Considered an early masterpiece of the genre, the Canadian cult comic has been out of print for decades. The new edition includes an introduction by Canadian comics master and Lemony Snicket collaborator Seth (Palookaville; It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken).
Cryptic and disturbing, like Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) illustrating a film by Ozu, The Cage spurns narrative for atmosphere, guiding us through a series of disarrayed rooms and desolate landscapes, tracking a stuttering and circling time and a sequence of objects: headphones, inky stains, bedsheets. It's not about where we're going but how – if – we get there.
Cryptic and disturbing, like Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) illustrating a film by Ozu, The Cage spurns narrative for atmosphere, guiding us through a series of disarrayed rooms and desolate landscapes, tracking a stuttering and circling time and a sequence of objects: headphones, inky stains, bedsheets. It's not about where we're going but how – if – we get there.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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May 22, 2014
This is flawless. Recurring and interlinked motifs -- a cage or machine, a hospital bed, an explosive gout of ink or blood, sequential images, architectural desolation, the passage of time, monitoring devices -- trace an oblique story steeped in menace and isolation, conveyed through dissociated image (exacting, perfect, cold, still) and narration (hypnotic, abstract, eliding between meanings, slipping unexpectedly from detachment to violence), lapsing in and out of sync but in constant dialogue nonetheless. It's utterly unique in the comics form, bearing more similarity of feel (and influence) from 60s/70s film and literature than from the underground comics scene that paved the way for sophisticated visual narrative. Tellingly, it was put out by Canadian avant-garde literary press Coach House, notably responsible for keeping Nicole Brossard in print.
Anyway, it's essential.
I was recently trying to draft some kind of a list of favorite comics ever, not necessarily inarguably best, certainly not most influential or historically significant, but subjectively those that speak to my imagination and aesthetics*. I came up with about 15 titles, most from the last 15 years or so, since that's more the period of my attention, and of the availability of the works themselves. Which underscores that I need to read more comics, better comics, particularly those more outre versions of earlier eras.
And then, the Cage. I'd been hearing about this for ages. Rumors, breathless reviews, a friend at a party: "There's a library upstairs -- they even have a copy of THE CAGE". Its legend around it like a labyrinth, a city, a plain of cryptic totems. And now at last it's been reissued, and it entirely lives up to all of that.
So what is this about, exactly? That has remained a fine-honed mystery since the Cage's release in the mid-70s, but it's hard not to get strong feelings from it. Nothing could suggest it to be meaningless. The titular cage is an oppressive overriding image, at times superimposed upon or perhaps interchangeable with a bleakly isolated hospital bed, sometimes surrounded by observing instruments, sometimes subject to extraordinary instances of deformation and destruction. Humans have been removed from the action, but their absence tears a hole, surrounded by abandoned personal effects and an at times overwhelming affect, even if frozen, trapped in glass and in time. An instant seems to lie at the center; it is repeatedly built towards, rehearsed, reiterated as many versions of a single provisional event. What that is, what violent or rending or significant act of moment -- this is at the center of the mystery of the book, but it is real and significant. To impose a single meaning on it would be to deprive it of its occult power, but I could advance several, with an array of evidence to back it. Like all great works, this kind of interpretation only traces the outlines of something greater that can never be fully articulated.
*I mentioned the subjectivity of that list, above. So here, arrayed for consideration, are some of those subjective qualities that I am irrevocably drawn to: architectural precision, atmosphere, surrealism, formal experimentation, abstraction of story or visuals, ability to operate without dialogue to strong overriding narrative drive for stretches, immediacy of experience. So not so different from what I might look for in a book or a film (I have some fairly consistent overriding interests -- realizing this completely changed my reading, actually). Examples (on a kind of spectrum from silent abstraction of experience to a more traditional, albeit fantastic storytelling structure) would be Yuichi Yokoyama's Travel, Hans Rickheit's The Squirrel Machine, and Charles Burns' Black Hole.
Anyway, it's essential.
I was recently trying to draft some kind of a list of favorite comics ever, not necessarily inarguably best, certainly not most influential or historically significant, but subjectively those that speak to my imagination and aesthetics*. I came up with about 15 titles, most from the last 15 years or so, since that's more the period of my attention, and of the availability of the works themselves. Which underscores that I need to read more comics, better comics, particularly those more outre versions of earlier eras.
And then, the Cage. I'd been hearing about this for ages. Rumors, breathless reviews, a friend at a party: "There's a library upstairs -- they even have a copy of THE CAGE". Its legend around it like a labyrinth, a city, a plain of cryptic totems. And now at last it's been reissued, and it entirely lives up to all of that.
So what is this about, exactly? That has remained a fine-honed mystery since the Cage's release in the mid-70s, but it's hard not to get strong feelings from it. Nothing could suggest it to be meaningless. The titular cage is an oppressive overriding image, at times superimposed upon or perhaps interchangeable with a bleakly isolated hospital bed, sometimes surrounded by observing instruments, sometimes subject to extraordinary instances of deformation and destruction. Humans have been removed from the action, but their absence tears a hole, surrounded by abandoned personal effects and an at times overwhelming affect, even if frozen, trapped in glass and in time. An instant seems to lie at the center; it is repeatedly built towards, rehearsed, reiterated as many versions of a single provisional event. What that is, what violent or rending or significant act of moment -- this is at the center of the mystery of the book, but it is real and significant. To impose a single meaning on it would be to deprive it of its occult power, but I could advance several, with an array of evidence to back it. Like all great works, this kind of interpretation only traces the outlines of something greater that can never be fully articulated.
*I mentioned the subjectivity of that list, above. So here, arrayed for consideration, are some of those subjective qualities that I am irrevocably drawn to: architectural precision, atmosphere, surrealism, formal experimentation, abstraction of story or visuals, ability to operate without dialogue to strong overriding narrative drive for stretches, immediacy of experience. So not so different from what I might look for in a book or a film (I have some fairly consistent overriding interests -- realizing this completely changed my reading, actually). Examples (on a kind of spectrum from silent abstraction of experience to a more traditional, albeit fantastic storytelling structure) would be Yuichi Yokoyama's Travel, Hans Rickheit's The Squirrel Machine, and Charles Burns' Black Hole.
March 7, 2025
قبل از شروع جلد ششم از The Obscure Cities ، دوست داشتم بیشتر درباره مارتین وان-جیمز که در نسخه فرانسوی L'Enfant penchée (The Leaning Girl) به عنوان "همکار" اسمش اومده بدونم. شنیده بودم از بدعتگذاران رمان گرافیکی هست و یه اثر داره که نه کارکتر داره، نه دیالوگ و نه حتی پلات; یه جریان سیال ذهنِ تصویریِ سوررئال که از بطن کمیک بوک های زیرزمینیِ اواخر دهه 60 پا به جهانِ کسل کننده و خطی ما گذاشته. اسمش : The Cage.
وان-جیمز از کلمه Visul Novel برای The Cage استفاده می کنه و می گه:
The Cage is [...] the last slide show on earth. Fuelled by the basically simple idea of murdering the ‘character’.
و در یه مصاحبه هم به تاثیر فیلمِ هیپنوگرافیکِ "سال گذشته در مارینباد" روی خلق The Cage صحه میذاره و توضیح میده در اینجا هدفش یه نوع داستانگویی تجربی (experimental storytelling) هست با دستکاری در کرنولوژی وقوع حوادث بر مبنای منطق رویا (Dream logic).
که به نظر من در اکثر مواقع با "منطق کابوس" همخوانی بیشتری داره
"Time is elastic and non-chronological, cyclical for the Gods and unidirectional for us mortals. We know also that the eye sees only what the brain allows it to see and ignores the rest, that our emotions change with time and consequently alter what we live as well as what we have lived. And so some simple, straightforward narrative was out of the question."
The Cage مثل یکی-دو تا کامیک اکسپریمنتال قبلی که برای پرژه این ماهم خوندم، باز هم وارد ژانر آثاری می شه که باید "تجربه" شن و فقط خواندنی/تماشاکردنی نیست. و صادقانه بگم ریویو نوشتنی هم نیست. بنابر این تصمیم گرفتم در خوانش دوم (کل کتابو میشه نیم ساعته تجربه کرد) یه مقایسه داشته باشم بین The Obscure Cities با . The Cage. و نتیجه:
1- هر دو اثر مشخصاً معماری محور هستن. در اینجا "معماری" سمبولی هست از psyche . دراینجا حصار (cage)، هرم، اتاق خواب و مهمتر از همه پمپ 1906 (پمپ تصویر خیالی؟) فضاهای ذهن رُ به یاد میارن.
2- چرخه زمان که منجر به درهم تنیدگیِ زیبایی و زشتی، خَلق و فروپاشی و عقلانیت و جنون میشه، منو یاد The Walls of Samaris و The Invisible Frontier میندازه.
3- با اینکه اینجا کارکتری وجود نداره و پلات مبهمه، اما حس "جدااُفتادگی" در The Cage یادآور پروتاگونیست های مجموعه Th Obscure Cities هست و هر دو در اثر رُ میشه Kafka-esque قلمداد کرد.
اگه خوندینش دوست دارم بیایید و دربارهش باهم صحبت کنیم. از تجربهتون برام بگید.
وان-جیمز از کلمه Visul Novel برای The Cage استفاده می کنه و می گه:
The Cage is [...] the last slide show on earth. Fuelled by the basically simple idea of murdering the ‘character’.
و در یه مصاحبه هم به تاثیر فیلمِ هیپنوگرافیکِ "سال گذشته در مارینباد" روی خلق The Cage صحه میذاره و توضیح میده در اینجا هدفش یه نوع داستانگویی تجربی (experimental storytelling) هست با دستکاری در کرنولوژی وقوع حوادث بر مبنای منطق رویا (Dream logic).
که به نظر من در اکثر مواقع با "منطق کابوس" همخوانی بیشتری داره
"Time is elastic and non-chronological, cyclical for the Gods and unidirectional for us mortals. We know also that the eye sees only what the brain allows it to see and ignores the rest, that our emotions change with time and consequently alter what we live as well as what we have lived. And so some simple, straightforward narrative was out of the question."
The Cage مثل یکی-دو تا کامیک اکسپریمنتال قبلی که برای پرژه این ماهم خوندم، باز هم وارد ژانر آثاری می شه که باید "تجربه" شن و فقط خواندنی/تماشاکردنی نیست. و صادقانه بگم ریویو نوشتنی هم نیست. بنابر این تصمیم گرفتم در خوانش دوم (کل کتابو میشه نیم ساعته تجربه کرد) یه مقایسه داشته باشم بین The Obscure Cities با . The Cage. و نتیجه:
1- هر دو اثر مشخصاً معماری محور هستن. در اینجا "معماری" سمبولی هست از psyche . دراینجا حصار (cage)، هرم، اتاق خواب و مهمتر از همه پمپ 1906 (پمپ تصویر خیالی؟) فضاهای ذهن رُ به یاد میارن.
2- چرخه زمان که منجر به درهم تنیدگیِ زیبایی و زشتی، خَلق و فروپاشی و عقلانیت و جنون میشه، منو یاد The Walls of Samaris و The Invisible Frontier میندازه.
3- با اینکه اینجا کارکتری وجود نداره و پلات مبهمه، اما حس "جدااُفتادگی" در The Cage یادآور پروتاگونیست های مجموعه Th Obscure Cities هست و هر دو در اثر رُ میشه Kafka-esque قلمداد کرد.
اگه خوندینش دوست دارم بیایید و دربارهش باهم صحبت کنیم. از تجربهتون برام بگید.
December 31, 2015
This 1975 "visual novel" offers a unique collision of words and images. Imagine an Alain Robbe-Grille novel illustrated by Roland Torpor (Fantastic Planet, etc) and you're partway there. Or perhaps an architectural manual storyboarded by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Deeply cryptic and evocative of something or other.
June 3, 2015
When Seth calls something a masterwork, I listen. When he calls the artist a "national treasure" such as Marshall McLuhan or Norman McLaren or Glenn Gould, I pay attention. His fine prefatory essay begins to get at how this 1972 comic novel explores and capitalizes on the resources of the comics medium. And there is a short intro by Vaughn-James himself, which, like Seth's own words, doesn't help us know what this text is really about. I am not sure it matters. There are many works of the imagination, of nightmare, of the surreal, of formal experimentation. And neither of our introducers claim to know what it is actually about. Having lived in 1972, having spent years protesting against the Vietnam War, post the deaths of MLK and Robert Kennedy, the race riots of the sixties, the campus unrest, having read Kafka and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Catch 22 (though those texts are funnier than this one!), I can play my life and cultural perceptions through this text, and maybe I am invited to. In this time, the neo-liberal destruction of the economy and the environment… a cage. Abu-Ghraib? The drawings are dark and precise and filled with decay and loss and emptiness, a post-apocalyptic scene. No people. A Rod Serling Twilight Zone futuristic nightmare? The actual one page panels have no words, as no one lives in them, no one can speak, but an unnamed and unidentified narrator speaks abstractly and also sometimes descriptively through the broken machinery and abandoned architecture.
I don't quite know what to make of it beyond my imagined dark political fantasies about it, but it has a haunting quality and formal precision that is impressive and evocative and mysterious. I read it a few times through, and took my time with it, and I'll read it again, I 'm sure. Serious comics exploration.
I don't quite know what to make of it beyond my imagined dark political fantasies about it, but it has a haunting quality and formal precision that is impressive and evocative and mysterious. I read it a few times through, and took my time with it, and I'll read it again, I 'm sure. Serious comics exploration.
April 27, 2014
Sorry, but this is a bunch of pretentious nonsense. The words are hyped-up overwrought baloney. The art is technically accurate but soulless. Maybe I'd be impressed if I was high.
June 7, 2017
Don't expect anything while reading this. The Cage is one of those abstract projects that you just have to "experience".
December 31, 2015
This is a book that I wish I had encountered maybe 27 years ago and read again today, so that I could compare my reaction then and now. Probably when I was about 18 or 19, I remember constant excitement as I was discovering unconventional and weird books, art, and films. The Cage read back then would likely have had so much significance, and so much of it would have felt so personal.
But reading it now with a layer of objectivity built up over the years and a strong base of material already discovered, I just really enjoyed The Cage for its strange narrative structure and surrealistic style, without being so caught up in what it was really supposed to mean. Both ways of seeing things are good, they are just different.
But reading it now with a layer of objectivity built up over the years and a strong base of material already discovered, I just really enjoyed The Cage for its strange narrative structure and surrealistic style, without being so caught up in what it was really supposed to mean. Both ways of seeing things are good, they are just different.
January 9, 2015
I keep reading reviews for this book about how obscure and complex it is. In the foreword, Seth talks about how he still does not know exactly what this book it about, and yet, it’s is ground-breaking work. I don’t quite get that. I thought the art was interesting, the writing beautiful for a while until you get bored of it for not really meaning anything. I get that I may not be smart enough to actually understand the deeper meaning of this book, I just know that I didn’t enjoy reading it.
July 1, 2021
Amazing drawings. Amazing drawings. Amazing drawings.
also Words, Atmosphere.
Abstract. A Modern piece of work.
The whole concept formed in its structure - the absence, of women or men and bodies even animals, characters, voices even if we can hear sounds, and time. So, there is not a generic logic like a real man or something like that usual -novel- work. Or the linear Chronological events occuring or not. We are in the void of spaces, formed along duchampian objects like machines, architecture, etc. Even vegetation is generic, and grows the same all over.
https://socks-studio.com/2020/07/12/t...
https://web.archive.org/web/200806121...
also Words, Atmosphere.
Abstract. A Modern piece of work.
The whole concept formed in its structure - the absence, of women or men and bodies even animals, characters, voices even if we can hear sounds, and time. So, there is not a generic logic like a real man or something like that usual -novel- work. Or the linear Chronological events occuring or not. We are in the void of spaces, formed along duchampian objects like machines, architecture, etc. Even vegetation is generic, and grows the same all over.
https://socks-studio.com/2020/07/12/t...
https://web.archive.org/web/200806121...
February 14, 2014
There's an inside joke in academia that goes something like this: if you want to submit a paper to a conference and present it there, change the first two sentences of whatever you're working on to reflect the theme of said conference and send it along. You've got a chance. Rinse and repeat.
I mention it because this book is High Art with a capital HA, and as such, it causes me to think of it in light of every paper I wrote. Is this book Duchampian, or am I just recycling every thought I've ever had about Marcel Duchamp in response to it? Seth, who wrote the introduction to the book, references Duchamp as well, so maybe I'm not alone. There's something decidedly like that old Frenchman in Vaughn-James's book, with its meticulous renderings and explorations of Perspective--all impressive, with its repurposed machines and non-narrative, non-linear text accompanying its visual elements (Vaughn-James does not appear to share Duchamp's erotically charged sense of humor, however, which is sort of a shame, I think).
I also think that there's a thesis, dissertation or book to be written about architecture as a physical embodiment of a society's ideals, or city plans as drafts for said society's vision of utopia, with this book and the work of Windsor Mckay as springboards with which to explore those subjects (others have surely written such tomes with the achievements of the renaissance, the age of enlightenment and/or classical civilizations as springboards). And so on, blah blah blah.
I admire the draftsmanship in this book, and read glorious chateaus and urban decay and all those spaces might imply in it. I like that some of its have frames drawn around them--that we are not merely looking at images on pages, but images of images. Views within views, etc.
So, in conclusion, High Art here. Difficult to make sense of but rich to ponder over.
I mention it because this book is High Art with a capital HA, and as such, it causes me to think of it in light of every paper I wrote. Is this book Duchampian, or am I just recycling every thought I've ever had about Marcel Duchamp in response to it? Seth, who wrote the introduction to the book, references Duchamp as well, so maybe I'm not alone. There's something decidedly like that old Frenchman in Vaughn-James's book, with its meticulous renderings and explorations of Perspective--all impressive, with its repurposed machines and non-narrative, non-linear text accompanying its visual elements (Vaughn-James does not appear to share Duchamp's erotically charged sense of humor, however, which is sort of a shame, I think).
I also think that there's a thesis, dissertation or book to be written about architecture as a physical embodiment of a society's ideals, or city plans as drafts for said society's vision of utopia, with this book and the work of Windsor Mckay as springboards with which to explore those subjects (others have surely written such tomes with the achievements of the renaissance, the age of enlightenment and/or classical civilizations as springboards). And so on, blah blah blah.
I admire the draftsmanship in this book, and read glorious chateaus and urban decay and all those spaces might imply in it. I like that some of its have frames drawn around them--that we are not merely looking at images on pages, but images of images. Views within views, etc.
So, in conclusion, High Art here. Difficult to make sense of but rich to ponder over.
December 8, 2013
Beautiful. Haunting. Weird. Delightfully weird.
This is surrealistic comics at its best. Do not try with this one, just let it happen. This is a dream, a nightmare maybe, unfolding. Disjointed.
If you hated "Waiting for Godot" or "La jetée", this will also bother you. ;)
This is surrealistic comics at its best. Do not try with this one, just let it happen. This is a dream, a nightmare maybe, unfolding. Disjointed.
If you hated "Waiting for Godot" or "La jetée", this will also bother you. ;)
October 14, 2020
I've read this several times and get something new with each reading.
August 13, 2020
Hmm this book is like a massive MFA project. If I was in art school still this would be the sickest thing I'd ever seen. The author says it's like "the last slide show on Earth." There are some really great images. They cycle and recycle. It's very punk, honestly.
Like this: "inevitable flood of mute destruction a string of bloodied rags and broken nails obliterating.. it's builders overtaken in their endeavor."
Is it about how we are all trapped in the cage of self destruction? Society will fall to a force? Is the cage in the room right now??
Literally speaking, it's a book with drawings of plants and twisted planes. There are a lot of parts that did shock me. I wish I could look at the images together rather than individually.
Format = weird
We = doomed
Like this: "inevitable flood of mute destruction a string of bloodied rags and broken nails obliterating.. it's builders overtaken in their endeavor."
Is it about how we are all trapped in the cage of self destruction? Society will fall to a force? Is the cage in the room right now??
Literally speaking, it's a book with drawings of plants and twisted planes. There are a lot of parts that did shock me. I wish I could look at the images together rather than individually.
Format = weird
We = doomed
March 20, 2021
A masterpiece. The introduction by Seth and the author's preface both mention Last Year at Marienbad as an inspiration for this unique graphic novel (published in 1975) and I can see that: an ambiguous intellectual puzzle that's wide open for interpretation via both the text and the images. It also made me think frequently of Susanna Clarke's recent Piranesi and I wonder if she might have read it.
December 17, 2020
I have absolutely no idea what I just read, and I loved it.
November 14, 2022
surely this is nobody’s favourite book
Read
November 30, 2023I can confidently say I’ve never read anything like this
August 1, 2024
No. I mean, yes. I mean no. I don’t know anymore.
October 25, 2023
I read this with my 2.5 yr old, we loved the motifs of isolation and human impact.
June 22, 2015
***Advanced Readers Copy from Net Galley***
I had no idea who Martin Vaughn-James was until I found this on Netgalley. Graphic novels are a pretty new thing for me, they were never around when I was growing up, and they weren't even called 'Graphic novels', they were simply called 'comic books' or 'pretty cartoon books with pretty colors in it'. Lately I noticed graphic novels are really darn powerful, beautiful, especially after reading a volume of of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
This graphic novel is very odd and thought provoking, maybe even a bit disturbing. The artwork is very real, very clean, and it pops out on the pages, because it looks and feels so realistic. The story however, may confuse some readers since it starts out with a pyramid, even though the cage was the one that was really destroying everything and taking everything in with the help of a black blob thing. The writing narrates the story and is the only way to express what is happening, without the text, readers will definitely be clueless.
This book is kind of hard to explain, the story line and everything. It's simply is what it is. It's a very symbolic story in my opinion, a very dystopian story where everything is destroyed by time, except for the pyramid. There is a pyramid, a cage, and a house. The house, from what I can interpret, is suppose to represent something beautiful, and maybe even perfect, but over time, it slowly decays and then the black ink drags it away into the cage, as if the house were human life or the life we desire, and it's is destroyed and dragged away into this miserable cage. Nothing seems to escape the grips of time, everything rots away. Then there is a garden with an abundance of leaves, living organisms, the only living thing that exists, but soon they are destroyed by the black ink. Then a whole abandoned city is destroyed too, and dragged away into this cage. The story kind of has a religious feeling to it, I was immediately reminded of the plague of gnats from the Book of Exodus. I am not religious but for some odd reason I thought of that plague, how it destroyed everything in it's path, like the black ink.
The cage is a horrifying thing in this novel, everything is destroyed and dragged away, to be locked forever, never freed, doomed for an eternity. The cage might be a symbol of evil or the end, a punishment for being too perfect or a form of hell after everything is destroyed by time. The act of existing is punished. It's very hard to explain, my words can't express this, which is what I like, it's very odd and surreal. It doesn't even need somebody else's words to show what makes this graphic novel so thought provoking. Only eyes can tell.
Rating: 3.5/5
I had no idea who Martin Vaughn-James was until I found this on Netgalley. Graphic novels are a pretty new thing for me, they were never around when I was growing up, and they weren't even called 'Graphic novels', they were simply called 'comic books' or 'pretty cartoon books with pretty colors in it'. Lately I noticed graphic novels are really darn powerful, beautiful, especially after reading a volume of of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
This graphic novel is very odd and thought provoking, maybe even a bit disturbing. The artwork is very real, very clean, and it pops out on the pages, because it looks and feels so realistic. The story however, may confuse some readers since it starts out with a pyramid, even though the cage was the one that was really destroying everything and taking everything in with the help of a black blob thing. The writing narrates the story and is the only way to express what is happening, without the text, readers will definitely be clueless.
This book is kind of hard to explain, the story line and everything. It's simply is what it is. It's a very symbolic story in my opinion, a very dystopian story where everything is destroyed by time, except for the pyramid. There is a pyramid, a cage, and a house. The house, from what I can interpret, is suppose to represent something beautiful, and maybe even perfect, but over time, it slowly decays and then the black ink drags it away into the cage, as if the house were human life or the life we desire, and it's is destroyed and dragged away into this miserable cage. Nothing seems to escape the grips of time, everything rots away. Then there is a garden with an abundance of leaves, living organisms, the only living thing that exists, but soon they are destroyed by the black ink. Then a whole abandoned city is destroyed too, and dragged away into this cage. The story kind of has a religious feeling to it, I was immediately reminded of the plague of gnats from the Book of Exodus. I am not religious but for some odd reason I thought of that plague, how it destroyed everything in it's path, like the black ink.
The cage is a horrifying thing in this novel, everything is destroyed and dragged away, to be locked forever, never freed, doomed for an eternity. The cage might be a symbol of evil or the end, a punishment for being too perfect or a form of hell after everything is destroyed by time. The act of existing is punished. It's very hard to explain, my words can't express this, which is what I like, it's very odd and surreal. It doesn't even need somebody else's words to show what makes this graphic novel so thought provoking. Only eyes can tell.
Rating: 3.5/5
January 31, 2014
As usual I didn't pay for this book but instead got it for the purposes of review. Also as usual despite that kindness I give my candid thoughts below.
This is the part of the review where I usually sum up the plot in a few quick sentences. I'm not going to do that this time because even after reading it I just don't know. In fact, according to the introduction, even people who have studied the book at length don't really know what it's about. Even the author himself doesn't claim complete knowledge of the book's real intent. So if they don't know then I certainly cannot claim to.
The best I can really do is to describe what I think it is and you can judge from there whether you want to give it a shot. From a narrative point of view it seems to be a view of one particular place in space viewed from various points in time. The book careens back and forth from present to future to past... or is it past to future to present... or... well, see paragraph two. Nobody knows what it's about so it's certainly not obvious even what order things happen in.
From a visual perspective the drawings are at times detailed and at others incisively minimalist. The artist conveys a poignant series of emotions centering on isolation and meandering widely. Any one page of this book could hang in an art gallery and lead to much thoughtful discussion as to what exactly is being depicted.
To sum up, should you buy this book? That depends. If you are a person who is in need of a strong narrative flow and clear procession from A to B to C then this is not the book for you. If, however, you are one who is intrigued by the idea of a book that you will read but not understand, and in fact read five times and understand in five different ways, then you need this on your shelf. This book is a large red-glowing question mark and if you're OK with that then this is worth a look.
This is the part of the review where I usually sum up the plot in a few quick sentences. I'm not going to do that this time because even after reading it I just don't know. In fact, according to the introduction, even people who have studied the book at length don't really know what it's about. Even the author himself doesn't claim complete knowledge of the book's real intent. So if they don't know then I certainly cannot claim to.
The best I can really do is to describe what I think it is and you can judge from there whether you want to give it a shot. From a narrative point of view it seems to be a view of one particular place in space viewed from various points in time. The book careens back and forth from present to future to past... or is it past to future to present... or... well, see paragraph two. Nobody knows what it's about so it's certainly not obvious even what order things happen in.
From a visual perspective the drawings are at times detailed and at others incisively minimalist. The artist conveys a poignant series of emotions centering on isolation and meandering widely. Any one page of this book could hang in an art gallery and lead to much thoughtful discussion as to what exactly is being depicted.
To sum up, should you buy this book? That depends. If you are a person who is in need of a strong narrative flow and clear procession from A to B to C then this is not the book for you. If, however, you are one who is intrigued by the idea of a book that you will read but not understand, and in fact read five times and understand in five different ways, then you need this on your shelf. This book is a large red-glowing question mark and if you're OK with that then this is worth a look.
March 13, 2014
The Cage was first published in 1976 by Coach House Press in Canada, in an edition of 1500 copies. Now 37 years later, the publisher has reissued it. After reading a recent newspaper review of The Cage, I searched it out at my local library. I couldn't believe it, they didn't have the new edition, they had the original book, one of the 1500 copies. Amazingly it was still in circulation. I was thrilled to be holding it in my hands. The Cage is an evocative nightmare of an unidentified totalitarian world. The drawings are precise depictions of crumbling architecture, ravaged by assaults, neglect and time. There are no human figures, just decay. The Cage is powerful in a way I can't really explain because I'm not sure I totally understand. There is text, but it suffers somewhat from it's time, the 70s, and I'm not sure it stands up very well. But that doesn't matter. The Cage is worth experiencing.
October 7, 2013
This is a very interesting and unique graphic novel.
The format of this graphic novel is one that I haven’t really seen before. Each page has one picture, almost like a snippet of a larger picture, and some text that aids in telling the story. I found the format interesting and thought that it added a lot to the overall story.
The overall story itself is hard to comprehend. It’s pretty deep and I think I’ll have to reread the book before I can even begin to understand what the overall message is.
The pictures in this book are really nice. They add an interesting perspective on everyday life. They’re created with very strict lines and they all follow a very particular format, which adds uniformity to the story.
Bottom Line: I would give this book 8/10 stars. It’s really unique and interesting, as well as a deep story.
I received this book for review purposes via NetGalley.
The format of this graphic novel is one that I haven’t really seen before. Each page has one picture, almost like a snippet of a larger picture, and some text that aids in telling the story. I found the format interesting and thought that it added a lot to the overall story.
The overall story itself is hard to comprehend. It’s pretty deep and I think I’ll have to reread the book before I can even begin to understand what the overall message is.
The pictures in this book are really nice. They add an interesting perspective on everyday life. They’re created with very strict lines and they all follow a very particular format, which adds uniformity to the story.
Bottom Line: I would give this book 8/10 stars. It’s really unique and interesting, as well as a deep story.
I received this book for review purposes via NetGalley.
October 15, 2019
Suspenseful without plot, creepy without characters, disturbing without purpose. A nightmare of sound and violence in a silent and still world. I'm still not quite sure if I'm terrified or entertained.
October 20, 2014
I really like the art but I guess I'm not high class scholarly enough to understand
Read
July 1, 2021from Vaughn-James' 2006 preface:
"A book with no story, a book with no characters. A comic book that doesn't look much like a comic. A strange idea? Where did it come from?"
published in 1975 by "the now legendary Coach House Press, home of all that was energetically new, however extreme, obscure, marginal or 'Canadada,' as we saw it."
influenced by Robbe-Grillet's For a New Novel
"American film noir, with its labyrinthine plots and heavily contrasted black and while photography, flashbacks and voice-over narrations, has always fascinated me, as well as rare so-called 'subjective' camera techniques …. [C]inema of the sixties and early seventies, both European and and American, undoubtedly helped shape my thinking about the 'visual novel' around 1971-1972, but I’m fairly sure that L’annee derrière a Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] had the greatest overt influence on The Cage."
"But the memory doesn’t work neatly like flashbacks in a movie. Time is elastic and non-chronological, cyclical for the Gods and unidirectional for us mortals. We know also that the eye sees only what the brain allows it to see and ignores the rest, that our emotions change with time and consequently alter what we live as well as what we have lived. And so some simple, straightforward narrative was out of the question. Blank pages demand to be filled, especially by someone who suffers from chronic horreur du vide [horror of the void]. To fill them I needed some kind of generator that could produce atemporal, self-accumulating images that would roll like snowballs and rise like houses of cards. I borrowed the facade of an electric pumping station for my “image generator” (I suppose I liked its neo-classical style), and invented a sort of infernal spinning piano-roll to produce my 'voice-over' text."
"A book with no story, a book with no characters. A comic book that doesn't look much like a comic. A strange idea? Where did it come from?"
published in 1975 by "the now legendary Coach House Press, home of all that was energetically new, however extreme, obscure, marginal or 'Canadada,' as we saw it."
influenced by Robbe-Grillet's For a New Novel
"American film noir, with its labyrinthine plots and heavily contrasted black and while photography, flashbacks and voice-over narrations, has always fascinated me, as well as rare so-called 'subjective' camera techniques …. [C]inema of the sixties and early seventies, both European and and American, undoubtedly helped shape my thinking about the 'visual novel' around 1971-1972, but I’m fairly sure that L’annee derrière a Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] had the greatest overt influence on The Cage."
"But the memory doesn’t work neatly like flashbacks in a movie. Time is elastic and non-chronological, cyclical for the Gods and unidirectional for us mortals. We know also that the eye sees only what the brain allows it to see and ignores the rest, that our emotions change with time and consequently alter what we live as well as what we have lived. And so some simple, straightforward narrative was out of the question. Blank pages demand to be filled, especially by someone who suffers from chronic horreur du vide [horror of the void]. To fill them I needed some kind of generator that could produce atemporal, self-accumulating images that would roll like snowballs and rise like houses of cards. I borrowed the facade of an electric pumping station for my “image generator” (I suppose I liked its neo-classical style), and invented a sort of infernal spinning piano-roll to produce my 'voice-over' text."
July 2, 2018
Well more of 2.5 stars. This book was much more than, and different than, ok. But I can't say that I liked it. It was visually striking and had an apocalyptic, creepy feel. It projected an unsettling, rambling, severe dream. The prose was largely nonsensical, at times arduous, and seemingly pointless. But it fit with the images, and the stream-of-consciousness non-story. It wasn't a narrative and therefore was weird, and not "enjoyable", but it was a very unique and rather intense experience. I'm glad I stumbled upon and through it.
July 24, 2024
3 pages in my brain doesn’t have enough imagination for this one and I’m sorry just didn’t understand it or comprehend it. Has this weird eerie, lonely , abscast vibe to but I just don’t get the plot or what is trying to be portrayed. Tried to read > skim it > got tired so only looked at the pics > finished and dropped it
Idk my reasoning for picking this up from local library other than I need something to check out but I wish I left it on the shelf. Nothing horrible, others say a masterpiece I say a forgettable gem for me. Just not my type of read
Idk my reasoning for picking this up from local library other than I need something to check out but I wish I left it on the shelf. Nothing horrible, others say a masterpiece I say a forgettable gem for me. Just not my type of read
February 12, 2018
I had no idea what I was getting into here other than it was a Canadian graphic novel from the 70s so I kind of feel like I have stumbled upon some unexpected, bizarre treasure. It is hard to describe because it is something like I have never seen. It is more like visiting your own private art exhibit than reading a traditional book. I can understand why many don't like it as it is very weird and doesn't honestly doesn't make sense? but... I was drawn into it and hope to pick up my own copy.
March 14, 2018
This book is old-fashioned creepy, like the empty rooms in "Goodnight Moon", the empty landscapes of John Bellairs, but more menacing than melancholy. The shiny, Lichstenstein-esque presumed-blood keeps it from becoming terrifying, but the wrinkliness of the vegetation is eerily animal. It was interesting to see pages of text and illustration that were clearly set without computer-aided layout. I know the author has more narrative comics work but this is an interesting more experimental work.
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