Angel Claws Hardcover – 21 Mar. 2019

Talk about coffee table books - this one is the coffee table. It isn't a book but a work of art and massive to boot, better check the sizes if you want to buy, it's got a massive wow factor. The book itself is high quality, it's sturdy and the paper is like thick card like holding the real work of art in your hands. Not a Jodorowsky book/story in the normal sense. Don't fully know if I understand the meaning but it reads like an idea on how a girl (read virgin) becomes a "woman" (called sexual awakening elsewhere) seen from a man's viewpoint, with an cryptic sometimes difficult to fathom statement (that qualifies it to be called poetic) on the LH side of one page and a full page black & white drawing by Moebius on the page next to it. Every single one of these is a work of art in its own right. Take the book for what it is: a collaboration between two great men, a piece of art to be treasured. It has a limited edition of 800 and thus not cheap but worth every penny and certainly different.

A graphic curiosity. Disturbing, odd and rather distressing in places. But there is a strangely redemptive quality which keeps you turning the pages. Intelligent, with striking, terse artwork. I wouldn't recommend this to those who are sensitive to the subject matter as it could trigger painful emotions. But I like the message which seemed to convey a woman rising above the abuse in her past, and battling through the deep set pain surrounding her sense of value as a sexual being and a female. The end certainly caught me offguard. Intriguing.

Surreal if with it we mean "I didn't understand." But I like it very much, is a pretty original and adult but mature story, or state of mind perhaps. The (explicit) art by Moebius is just that: art. The writing is almost of an alien and a familiar world, is quite desolate. Maybe I am far from being the intended reader of this work, because if I had understood it I am sure to have loved it, but what I liked was that path in which death and sex cross each other. That time of climax where existence seems to disappear and we suddenly melt into each other. The fact that it starts with the onyric funeral of the father makes me think that it is the sexual awakening of a young girl, with the Oedipus complex pointed by psychologists as part of her path to mature and accept themselves. Or maybe is just what it is and as so it is beautiful too.

I probably misspelled the artists name but all four star ratings go to him. The writing by Jodorowski is always very difficult for me to follow in a single shot effort like this one. For a better story by this team that is easier to consume check out the Incal series instead. I think this team shines more brightly in a sprawling story such as that.

Moebius is a favorite of mine, and the artwork shines, but this won’t be for everyone. Full graphic nudity, gimp suits, masks, leather bondage, and bodily fluids- all abound in this short collection. The accompanying words, probably meant to be shocking, fail a little in their effect because I wasn’t buying into it. The narrator is a woman in the arc of transformation but it felt more like a puppet voiced by a man who doesn’t really understand women. Does that sense?

Kind of disturbing, but I think that's the point. It's not a long book, it's more of a graphic novel than a illustrated novel.

I was really happy for her and then the ending happened and I'll need a few days to fully process it.