Clive Barker’s The Great And Secret Show
Review by Jacob Malewitz
Hellraiser proposes hell in a small cube; it’s also a perfect, flawed portrait of what happens when hells demon’s make war on those unfortunate souls who play the game. Known for horror, like “The Books of Blood” “Hellraiser,” Barker has had some fitting adaptations in comic books. The first “Hellraiser” graphic novels have been released by Checker Books. But IDW, a comic publisher known for “Transformers” and “30 Days of Night,” offers “The Great And Secret Show,” an adaptation of Barker’s work by Chris Ryall and Gabriel Rodriguez. One goes in expecting epic horror of the fantastic kind, with blood screams and maybe magic; instead you get something that rolled around in Barker’s mind (as he proposes in a different light in the intro), where reality is gone, the body mundane, and where the depth of a character is just as entertaining.
Randolf Jaffe, a postal worker, is truly mundane, and finds his own level of heaven and catching a few fleeting glimpses of hell. One asks the question immediately: When will he go postal? He looks to much like a disturbed clerk—ala “American Splendor”—not to either search for something he lacks or find he needs nothing.
Randolf Jaffe’s job is to go through letters the post office couldn’t deliver, hoping to find cash, valuables, anything. He finds something: a look into The Art, a coin or talisman, and a place called Atlantis. The Art is a cerebral place which offers not only power and knowledge, but immortality. Randolf is willing to die to find it. This find provides the outcast more reason to isolate, or perhaps a way to make his mark on the world.
He makes some of the choices that make this a Barker book: he exacts his dreams by bloodshed and calls for power. A character with nothing to lose, Jaffe wants more. The images of a man with frisk hair, skinny, and one who keeps to himself point out he has every reason to leave the empty life and begin anew.
Telling the tale of one man bent on taking the world acts as entertainment. But other characters are brought in, each who have a destiny tied to Randolf. It becomes much more than a story of hell and hate, good and evil. The characters all have connections to The Art in some way, all being pieces fitting onto the board. A surprise awaits, because lines are blurred here for each character. The question becomes, which side each character touched by The Art choose?
Writer Ryall works in the metaphysical elements that one so often sees in Barker’s works. Characters desires overtake them. In “Hellraiser” the toy box; in “Candyman” the reflection in the mirror; in “The Great And Secret Show” a moment of insanity, of not looking for things but finding them. Assumptions cannot be made of this piece; genre labels don’t fit. Randolf goes searching for that which will make him something different. He sleeps with men and women, drinks, travels, and all in the hope of finding answers to a curiosity overtaking him. Ryall lets the story out; this is no three act, Spider Man attacks Green Goblin, loses, tries again, then kisses Mary Jane. We have a fragment of life worked in: fast and slow, it brings Barker’s surreal vision to the comic page.
Rodriguez takes a lively character in the initial stages of this graphic novel, developing his madness and desires, while showing patience in the artwork—not overwhelming the story with splash pages or constant movement. Ryall has a part in that, making sure the action scenes are rare early, but allowing for the story to hold something of the fantastic and becoming hard to turn away from. It’s a story that stays with you.
It is becoming of a Barker-cliché to say blood is common. This story has plenty of physical and philosophical battles—even some action scenes—but little blood. It’s a portrait of what evil is, and how good contradicts it.
The title of the piece is related to the characters. “The Great And Secret Show” is something scene by everyone upon birth, death, and once while sleeping next to the love of one’s life.
What makes it different? Barker brought in plenty of drama to his look at the fantastic. “The Great And Secret Show” tells a story akin to Stephen King or Robert R. McCammon, where blood is there, but it’s not the answer or the focus. No character or scene is wasted, which is somewhat surprising because bloodshed, sex, and mad voodoo are atypical in these types of literary fantasy. It works as a laborious pursuit which, at times, finds gold. From tribal figures with wisdom, to screenwriters with a penchant for the mysterious, one sees why this dreaming vision works on so many levels.
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