The great Dave Mckean creates a whole new universe in his new work, Abductor. Fantasy, love, responsibility and a lot of magic in a book edited by CCP in Spain.
In Abductor, Sokol wanders through a world where time seems to have stopped. He is a monster hunter, he helps wherever he is needed, for a price. His life takes place in a strange, magical land, where the extraordinary can happen, a medieval world buried in shadows and smoke. Sometimes, he touches with another universe. And that’s how Arthur knows magic. After the loss of his wife, lost love, melancholy and pain leads him to play with occult sects and lodges, and so he meets Sokol.
Abductor. A graphic novel by Sokol is the new work of Dave McKean, the versatile author creates a new scenario to tell his stories. Mixing fantasy, in an environment that seems to dream about itself at times, the author unfolds his incredible art to shape a story about loss, love, and responsibility.
The plot unfolds in two lines that run in parallel. Sokol’s, showing his world and his job, hunting monsters. And Arthur’s, in which we learn where despair over the loss of a loved one can lead. The differences between the characters are not sought by comparison, but by development. Both travel paths that converge, reaching a moment of discovery for both, and of change.
McKean does not complicate the story with radical twists, the plot is simple and rich in detail. Each situation leaves a message and the art of it makes it clear that each page shows much more than what we read. The British artist’s drawing is powerful, and conveys so much that Sokol’s dream becomes reality for the reader, and the mists of Arthur’s scattered consciousness take shape in fears and reproaches.
As always, the author displays a large number of styles and aesthetic forms. Pencil, pen, acrylic, oil, collage, everything has its moment and its relevance. The almost dreamlike world of Sokol, the world anchored in the realism of Arthur, exchange positions, mix with third styles, and come together in collages whose different levels give an overwhelming depth to the pages.
You can’t tell much about the work without discovering many of its strongest points. The search for meaning in loss, in life, in the world, the search for quick solutions, the corruption of power, there are so many themes expressed in so few pages, with just brushstrokes. Dave McKean is able to express through his art the themes that he needs, showing a lot, without forgetting to tell his story.
Raptor is a work that not everyone will like, the aesthetic is very typical of the painter, and if it is not to your liking it is difficult for you to enter the comic. But if you can abstract yourself within the art, you will find an intense work, which has a lot with very little, but which uses an incredible amount of aesthetic and pictorial resources.