I sometimes think the transformation of comics into a mature, viable artform will take at least another 20 years. It certainly isn't one at the moment. The marketplace, at present, is populated by short form works of considerable energy but little ambition and concerted thought. It is a situation we fully deserve, for we consistently fail to support the truly difficult ventures. Dave McKean has been putting out issues of Cages since 1990. It is, by far, his finest work in the comics to date. Yet the echoes from Arkham Asylum and Sandman have persistently drowned out any praises it has garnered. All in all, a truly shameful mess.
Cages opens with 11 pages of text and illustration which lay bare McKean's thoughts and purposes. Titled "Scaffolding," this prologue ponders the perennial questions of origins and beginnings. Our lives and those of the characters of the book are seen as extensions of McKean's myths of creation. Our follies, trespasses, failures and creative urges are reflected in the lives of primordial men, women and animals. In McKean's first story, a man and a woman (his muse?) create the world and a variety of animals from a grain of sand. The initial enthusiasm is followed by a morbid boredom which can only be relieved by the creation of travesties and monsters. There is renewed energy when the woman suggests a search for a higher plane of life and art, but this "light" blinds them and they are left
"... watching the dancing colors and patterns swirl in their eyes, leaving them with the knowledge that these visions had nothing to do with the world they had created. They had seen nothing."
The seeds of despair are sown, and when the man begins to doubt, his creation fades, with only the "thought of it," the "potential of it" and a "virus of it" left to kindle or corrupt the motivations of the world that will follow. These are thoughts echoed in a recitation in chapter four:
"It a heasy ting to live for de lightnin' crack illumination of possession. It a heasy ting to hide in de dark o' faith. Pretendin' dat anythin' dat scitter an' scuttle in de night is jus' bad himagination..."
This is McKean's take on the role of the artist. To "illuminate another part of [the] darkness" after the initial match has been struck, while trudging on in the face of defeat irrespective of the suffering involved.
McKean's second take ruminates, somewhat autobiographically, on the vagaries of Death. In this alternative myth, the creator is Death who sacrificially brings forth life. Death is seen to enfold life like a "sarcophagus" and we perceive the skeletal boundaries of our lives only transiently in dreams (the "small deaths"). McKean explains the motifs of this story in The Comics Journal #155:
"... there was one singular event which was catastrophic for me, and I didn't want to get obsessive or morbid about it, but I did keep returning to it... ever since then I've felt very aware of death being around. And it's not a morbid thing at all -- it's actually quite motivating."
Death has been a constant presence in McKean's life, but it is seen not so much as a destroyer but as a lifegiver and a force for creativity. This myth, like much of the rest of Cages, is McKean's personal view of the artistic life, enlarged and universalized for the consumption of his readers.
The third myth tells of a god who creates and manipulates. He is duplicitous and sets man "an endless task to keep him occupied and to keep God forever in his mind." But man overcomes the conundrum set before him; the old god is forgotten and takes on his mantle. This is history and religion sketched in with broad strokes of optimism. Man solves his riddle by first producing an octopus, which shrouds the world in darkness for "quite a long time." This is the darkness which we exist in at the present, but McKean seems to think we will pass out of it, for the man next produces an owl whose "light [lets] everyone see a little bit." Pallas' creature of knowledge is seen as an illuminator who cuts streaks of light in the darkness we have created, and in the rest of Cages, knowledge is communicated through painting and literature, instruments to tear the cobwebs from our eyes. The final animal man produces is a song bird, who charms the sun into the sky "by the sweetness of [its] song." This is the beauty and purpose of music which we are apprised of in the rest of Cages. Art is seen as the key to renewal and "godhood." The story encapsulates the long tradition of producing art in the name of a God who has since been forgotten, "taken for granted and burned and fouled... without thinking." Man is seen as the new god who reveals the mysteries of the cosmos to his fellow animals. This is McKean's perception of the world; an outmoded, atheistic view coupled with strong humanistic tendencies. The Age of Enlightenment revisited.
In his final myth, McKean sees God as a cartographer; an artisan in his workshop who needs to elucidate perfection. He does so through "imperfection" and "unpredictability." McKean's rose-colored glasses are cast aside in favor of a violent pessimism. On the one hand, this story openly asks how free will can exist in the presence of an omnipotent and omniscient God. In another sense, it attempts to illustrate the alchemical mix of intellect, emotion and instinct which go into the creation of art. In McKean's view, a piece of art should not consist simply of diverse elements which, if pieced together, will reveal a final answer with "no mystery, no enigma." It is a theme which he returns to later in this work. Man (the creation) is first seen as an ordered organism with elements of genius (Michelangelo's Sistine), complexity (the innumerable conjunctions of nerve endings) and eternity; the synthesis of perfection. The imperfect yet perfect man leaves pale, twisted animals in his path. He despises both God and God's creation, and he is left "utterly and perfectly alone" at the story's end. His beautification will be complete when he "[comes] to understand," but an element of this process is that he will never fully understand everything. It is a perfection borne of man's journey of discovery.
Chapter One ("Descent"). McKean claims that Cages has a strong cinematic element, and this is certainly true of this opening chapter involving a cat. His agile black animal leaps from ledge to ledge, pads around, yawns and occasionally lies on its back to get its belly rubbed. It also turns its head periodically to get a scratch just in the right place (behind the ears, that is).
The cat is an important animal in McKean's fourth myth. It is privy to God's thoughts and motivations and it is also concerned about the welfare of man. At the beginning of the chapter, we follow this heavenly visitor down through the various levels of Meru House, the earthly embodiment of the "golden mountain that stands in the center of the universe" (Encyclopedia Britannica) in Hindu mythology. J. G. Davies (in the Encyclopedia of Religion) states that the temple plans of certain Hindu temples function as mandalas -- "a sacred geometrical diagram of the essential structure of the cosmos." The axis mundi is "a place sacred above all others providing access to the supreme being" (Lawrence E. Sullivan).
To denote the heavenly nature of Meru House, McKean initially restricts his use of paints to the interiors of this temple. Having said this, I do not mean to suggest that the rest of Cages is a Hindu allegory, though McKean himself may well be interested in various eastern religions.
At the highest level of Meru (Brahma-loka), we find "Brahma," the creator god and first member of the triad (now displaced by Vishnu and Shiva). McKean depicts him as the watchmaker who happens to own a broken wristwatch. He doesn't merit attention and has a rather bizarre appearance. To McKean, God is a funny, awkward, scowling mute. His messages are as confused and ridiculous as his present day prophets (see the card sequence in issue #6). Like other representatives of God, he makes it a point to possess the works of artists of note. He seems to pay ridiculous amounts for these pieces but, who knows, there may be hidden knowledge in what he does. While he is no longer considered the "supreme deity," there will always be a place for him in the various "temples" (both secular and religious) which dot our earth.
On the next level (Vaikuntha), we find "Vishnu," who the others call Angel. Vishnu is the preserver and the second god in the triad. He is also the protector and "the restorer of moral order (dharma)," elements which take on new meaning during Angel's jazz recitations. The eighth incarnation of Vishnu is Krishna, who happens to play a pipe (Angel plays a pipe). When Vishnu-Angel plays his pipe, the birds of the air flock to him as once did his faithful mount, Garuda.
Goloka, the home of Krishna, is on the next level. Soon, it will become the home of the story's protagonist, Leo Sabarsky. Here, a fascinating device is used by McKean to show the various stages in the life of "Goloka." As the cat looks through the first of five windows which make up the eyes of this haven, it sees an empty room. Peeping through the next window, it sees Sabarsky making a mess of his painting. The next window shows him making love to Karen, his girlfriend, as Krishna is sometimes seen to do with his mistress, Radha. It should also be remembered that the ziggurats of Babylon were sometimes "topped by a temple containing a bed upon which the union of the priestess and the god was consummated," signifying "the fusion of the world of gods and mortals." The fourth window shows a couple clinging desperately to each other in the dark. A premonition which does not find its fulfillment until the final issue. A resolution is seen when the fifth window is viewed. The room is shown to be vacant once again.
Indra-loka is the home of Indra and also of Jonathan Rush and his wife, Ellen. This is where McKean drifts away from his allegory. Indra is the Vedic god of rain and thunder, and was originally the god of light. He was once considered a member of the Hindu triad, but has since been eclipsed in importance. An accurate portrait, perhaps, of the failing fortunes and troubled life of the talented writer?
Since Mt. Meru "reaches down below the ground, in the nether regions, as far as it extends into the heavens," what follows must represent a Dante-like descent into the bowels of the earth. This less-than-palatable journey is amusingly depicted as a cautious leap into a trash can by the cat. The inferno is populated by madmen, malcontents, masked monstrosities, beggars and other shadows. Malevolent versions of Thomson and Thompsen walk the streets with their demon dog, waylaying the pedestrians and the inhabitants of Meru.
It is within this abyss that we meet Sabarsky, who must then make the slow ascent to his new apartment, a temple crowned by towers and "stupas." Here he meets Meru's guardian, an old matron who reminds me of Shelley Winters in The Tenant. The dialogue here is largely representative of the rest of Cages, with short quips and periodic pauses. In this, we can see McKean's commitment to a type of realism. Most of his contrivances, with the notable exception of chapter six, are locked away in his captions and musings on art. The chapter closes with the symbolic unveiling of a blank canvas. And so the story begins.
Chapter Three ("Drawing a Blank") begins with a transformation. The scaffoldings of Meru House are transformed into two raptors (or prehistoric birds?), one of which punches a cone of light into the night sky, symbolically creating a blank slate on which a new universe is to be created. Once again the artist is seen in the light of creation, and Sabarsky awakes the next morning to a blank canvas. While I can think of no creation myths centered around birds, a statement by Rush later in the chapter seems to clarify matters:
"Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely."
The raptors bring to mind the falcon god Horus, who happens to be the Egpytian god of the sky, and "whose outstretched wings filled the heavens" (compare this description with McKean's painterly illustration). Meru and the universe are seen as cages which differ only in their dimensions. Within Meru are the multi-roomed cages of the body, and within these rooms are the unfathomable cages of the mind, both creative and emotional. Even the cat acquires a cage later in the book; a prison from which he finds release through the blade of a scalpel.
The rest of the chapter introduces the major characters in the plot; characters through whom McKean's chosen forms of expression are explored. Each personification of the artistic spirit is introduced via a blank panel, for the blank sheet is the starting point of all their activities. As Rush (read: McKean) puts it:
"For a life to end in order to create these pages, there's a responsibility to fill them with ideas. It's the only thing we can do to give life back to them."
Rush is a writer who has lost his way after his latest creation (a book called Cages). The cover illustration to his book depicts the Tower of Babel, a monument to the art of the builder. The tower was mankind's greatest achievement, being both beautiful and permanent. According to Tamara M. Green,
"... the construction of towers represent the universal human need to reunite the celestial and terrestrial worlds as they were at the beginning of time."
Towers are seen as "a means of communication and even union with the sacred." The Tower of Babel represented a futile attempt to become as God, the creator. It was mankind's greatest folly, generating the divisions which have remained with us to this day. These are the precarious heights to which to all artists are irresistably drawn.
Sabarsky is a painter seeking inspiration in solitude. His "fear of freedom" is the reason for Rush's remarks mentioned above. Finally, there is Angel, the jazz artist, who is unveiled through the whiteness of an ivory keyboard. Devoted to bop and the raw excitement of "hot" jazz, he performs in the strange underworld that is the Katacumbe club. His audience is a twisted array of individuals embodying lewdness, depression and suspicion. Angel and Sabarsky are brothers in spirit. There is a section towards the end of chapter three when panels alternate between the activities of Angel and Sabarsky as passages from a book by Rush ("Rhetorical Conversation for Inanimate Objects and Improbable People") appear as meaningful captions. To emphasize the point, one of the panels shows Angel unfolding a sketch of himself done by Sabarsky with the words "... to me" appearing in explanation. This mystical flavor seeps into the next passage, where an earthquake occurs. It is greeted with a low hum produced by Angel's musical stones (or the caterwauling of a cat?) which seem to tame the seismic tremors, as noises are said to do in legends of old.
Chapter Four ("the individual lines begin to describe something"). When Sabarsky suffers a mental block, he rushes into the depths of the local jazz club for inspiration and solace. Angel is there, with his band. So begins the first of McKean's "sermons"; a monologue (with accompaniment) musing on the process of artistic creation. It begins with the "confidence" to strike a match to create the first spark of light, and is followed by an allegory concerning two brothers who differ in their approaches to music. A primary concern in Cages is the eternal debate between the jazz purist and the orchestral modernist; between the innovative improviser and the intelligent, technically brilliant musician. As such, the first tower to be scaled along the bridge is that of technical competence, but from there the brothers diverge to elaborate on their skills. Like Benny Goodman, the first is accused of being
"... aware of what his music was but he started to lose grip of what it meant. Where it had come from, its origins."
The second finds
"... way of hexpression' dat music quick an' easy, but den he jus' got lazy."
The resolution of the problem is simple, obvious and difficult. A melding of the two forms to create a music which is "true" with "pain" being "part of the process of revelation." The last comics work (of length) in recent memory to be so jazz obsessed was probably Munoz and Sampay's Billie Holiday, which was more a documentary comic similar in content to The Long Night of Lady Day. In Billie Holiday, we see elegantly drawn lounges filled with streams of smoke and expressive faces. But the presence of music (or even sound) is clearly absent. Would it have been sacrilegious to express her vocal technique artistically?
The problem of expressing the emotions, intelligence and skill involved in the production of music has been on the minds of a number of comic artists. Some opt for the simple suggestion of music through notes which circulate through the panels while the musicians grimace and shout appropriately. McKean takes the other route. He wants us to focus on the mood and the atmosphere; the key moments in a performance which will remain with us for the rest of our lives: the casual toss of a cigarette butt; the enunciation of a few key words; the low moan of a double bass and the soft clatter of a snare drum; and the sense of vitality and self-discovery which surrounds. A host of questions would have been going through McKean's mind as he attempted this expression of jazz in terms of art. Should the piece be as abstract and furiously expressionistic as a fugue in Fantasia? Should the paints be scratched and smeared on with little forethought or carefully thought out and judged? Should there even be correction once the piece is finished? Should the music be colorful or somber? Will the music take precedence and enshroud the proceedings or will the skill of the performance come to the fore? McKean gives the first of his answers in this chapter.
In chapters four and five ("in the dark all cats are gray"), light begins to take on a curious form. With its clearly defined boundaries, it becomes as tangible as any tool or weapon. In keeping with this mood of illumination, Sabarsky is filled with creative energy as he leaves the curb. But the night of painting ends with a sense of loss, because the lesson has been heard but not assimilated.
"Home life as we understand it is no more natural as to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo."
George Bernard Shaw, Getting Married
Chapter Six ("Time and Origami") describes the life of Mrs. Featherskill, a lonely soul who lives on one of the lower levels of Meru. It is a monologue punctuated by the screeches of her cockatoo and a dream sequence. In a way, it is upon Featherskill that McKean practices his art of paper folding, creating a complex picture out of an individual who we have hitherto only seen peeping through a doorway. Featherskill's face, by her own description, "looks like a blind man's doodle." She drifts from topic to topic as she makes her confession to the readers; always returning to the subject of her husband, who she is constantly reminded of through the contents of her apartment.
The dream sequence (lodged somewhere in the middle) can be interpreted in the light of Sabarsky's explanations in chapter seven ("Strata"). The forest, through which a young Featherskill (and Karen, Leo's future girlfriend) suggests a "curious and fatalistic" view of life. The container found in Featherskill's forest represents "[her] problems and how [she deals] with them." Featherskill's container is a heavily worn, ornate box filled with trinkets, two word balloons and an origami pigeon. It is easily opened and found, for this is the manner in which she deals with her problems. The paper pigeon, when unfolded, has the words "Stupid Bitch" written on it. These are words which she has been constantly repeating to herself. Her distress is relieved by a memory; the reflection of her youthful face in a hollow tree filled to the brim with rain water. The water, according to Sabarsky-McKean, symbolizes a person's sex life, which in this case may be seen to be natural, joyful and comforting (and perhaps engaged in with moderation). Featherskill next encounters a wall which represents "death." "Death" is greeted with some foreboding, but is easily scaled because of the numerous vines which have grown over it. What lies beyond the wall is both beautiful and liberating; a vibrant meadow of wildflowers which begins to color her very person. Paradise is a shimmering, multi-hued butterfly irresistibly attracted to a candle flame, where it is extinguished. Death to Featherskill is, therefore, a return to nothingness, but it is a more than welcome alternative to life.
At various points in Featherskill's monologue, her cockatoo attempts to make some helpful comments. It soon becomes apparent that these are comments which have been made repeatedly by Featherskill during her five-year-long period of depression, and it is informative to consider what she has been saying to herself during these quiet sessions. Here are some of the words of her cockatoo:
"What a bugger"
"Bill's not home yet!"
"You daft apeth"
"Bill's not home day before yesterday."
"Bill's not home last week"
"How long since he came home?"
"Five years"
"Five years, three months four days."
"Never even said good-bye, and you know why"
"He was bored SHITLESS! You bored him shitless. He hated this stupid little life. He needed change. He buggered off and left you, you stupid bitch, he buggered off and didn't even say good-bye"
"He didn't even say good-bye"
"Stupid bitch"
In The Comics Journal #155, McKean recalls how Dr. Leo John de Freitas thought the parrot's voice was McKean's when he read the issue. Readers might like to bear this in mind when they attempt to attribute voices and emotions in this piece. One should also consider McKean's playful note of ambiguity at the end of the chapter which makes such attributions just a bit more complex.
The pictures in this sad little tale tell a story all their own. Featherskill's card index system for her recipes can be taken to represent the level of order which Bill had brought to her life. When her stove catches fire, she is caught looking distraught behind the flames as if roasting in an inferno. Similarly, an elaborate cage is superimposed on Featherskill's face the minute her parrot starts to shriek uncontrollably, thus leaving the reader with a pointed question concerning captivity. It is a theme which is played out on the cover to the issue where a cage of the mind swallows Featherskill's head whole. On the back cover, a young Featherskill is seen as a mouthless (and unsmiling) Mona Lisa, enshrined in a golden tower like a fairy tale princess. Hold that image in your mind and remind yourself of her faded beauty, then read this short passage from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women:
"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."
Curiously enough, this isn't the first story on McKean's oeuvre which contains a monologue, nor is it his first work to be told almost entirely in near-repetitive panels. The other work in question is "A Glass of Water" from Fastforward #1. It's written by Grant Morrison and both works were published around the same time. "A Glass of Water" tells the story of a depressed middle-aged woman who happens to have taken a bottle of paracetamol. Not only are the stories similar in mood, but the central figures in each actually look the same (could this be some acquaintance of McKean's? It seems impossible that McKean would put his mother into such morbid storylines). Some people might argue that a monologue fails to use the form to its utmost. After all, such stories will always lack the emotional punch afforded by the voice and mannerisms of a good actor. The comics writer compensates for this through a number of devices, some of which are mentioned above. In Morrison's and McKean's story in Fastforward, the depth of focus, backgrounds and linework is varied considerably to keep up interest. While there are a number of arguments for such stories, a repetitive panel sequence can be a "risky" venture, for it often leads a casual reader to skip over the pictures in favor of the words (out of sheer laziness borne of monotony).
There have been a number of successful monologues in the past, like those by Harvey Pekar, for example. More recent cases include the works of Dan Clowes and Thom Webb Scott's Motherless Child. It will come as no surprise that both Scott and Morrison have been involved, at one time or another, with the stage where the script reigns supreme. Obviously, the rarity of such long form monologues in comics is symptomatic of the serious lack of any good or courageous writing in the artform.
Chapter Seven ("Strata") takes us through the life of Jonathan Rush via his books. It's an interesting device, with titles and contents triggering off a stream of reminiscences. For example, when Rush reads a dedication to his wife, memories of happier times materialize like ghostly images in the background. Similarly, he remembers other books in terms of awards, hard work or disasters.
Leo and Karen meet each other (through a sketchbook) for the first time in this chapter as well. Here is art which begets love which begets art. So begins a long night of conversation and dancing told entirely in pictures. Loose, sinuous lines suggest a lightness of spirit and fluidity of motion while musical notes frolic in the background, sometimes intruding on Leo's mind or casting reflections across his spectacled face. There is talk of drawing and painting, the art of writing and architecture. Leo's head swells as his words begin to dominate but soon the conversation readjusts and the couple is lost in a swirling eddy of broad black brush strokes as forks and spoons and teacups tinked away in the darkness. It is a night to remember, and one which is consolidated in a little portrait painting session.
"Strata" part four. In this chapter, relationships are developed and secrets divulged. Karen undergoes a bit of psychoanalysis during a garden walk, while Jonathan undergoes another torture session at the hands of the twins. Let's consider the slightly less interesting relationship first: that between Leo and Karen.
If we drift back to a Hindu theme for a while, we will see that Karen may be taken for Krishna's mistress, Radha, who is sometimes seen, in various religious paintings, to engage in some "amorous play" with her lover in forest groves. If we take the symbolism even further, Karen-Radha can be seen as "the human soul" interacting intimately with Sabarsky (Krishna) who symbolizes "the divine."
The short passage from McKean's imaginary book, The Quiet Storm, can also be interpreted in a religious sense. On its final page, there is a description of "a man unable to grasp" his reflection in a pond; an image which seems to be a "fundamental truth." The disillusionment which comes with age causes the protagonist to release himself from "the moorings of love, hope and magic," and he drifts away "like a leaf held in the fingertips of a breeze." It's a bare-faced illustration of Jonathan Rush's life, but Hinduism lays claim to a similar type of imagery:
"Sruti, or 'what is heard,' refers to the eternal truths of religion which the rishis or seers saw or heard ... They are the primary and final authority of religious truth. Using the analogy of the reflection of an image in a mirror or on the surface of a lake, the intellect of the ancient rishis was so pure and calm that it perfectly reflected the entirety of eternal truth."
Bruce Nichols, The World's Religions
The twins of evil periodically confiscate items from Jonathan's house, and he has come to believe that they only take things which he loves. They tear out pages from his favorite novels and take away a painting given to him by Leo. When they fail to appropriate anything which he has reason to enjoy, he inevitably starts to doubt his own his own assessments of their value; The Quiet Storm (which is not confiscated) being a case in point. The delightfully tragic twist is that the twins fail to confiscate his wife, and this becomes a considerable source of tension in the household. I have a feeling that the reason for this lies in a note pasted in one of Jonathan's books, which states:
"You may only keep what cannot console you."
The suggestion, if it is not obvious already, is that neither Ellen nor The Quiet Storm can provide any comfort to him, for they only remind him of his failures, duty and guilt. His adopted cat and Leo's painting, however, do give him a semblance of reassurance, and are promptly taken away. It revolts afainst everything expressed in this stanza from Richard Lovelace's To Althea, From Prison:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty."
Chapter Eight ("Schism") begins with the death of a cat. It loses one of its nine lives, and a naked figure falls to the ground in its place. McKean actually mentions Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire at one point in his interview with d.e Freitas, and there angelic possibilities in this little segment as well.
Like Tolstoy's angel in What men live by, there are certain truths that need to be learnt here, and we are soon brought, through the cat's eyes, to the dissection room of an eccentric vivisectionist whose specialty is "household furnishings and fitments." His job:
"To find why dysfunctional people love particular things."
McKean obviously found the need for some light entertainment at this point in Cages, for things soon take a turn for the bizarre. The good doctor wears an aesthetically pleasing mask (a la Michael Palin in Brazil) before he begins his rather "wet" look, and the cat is soon transported into the heavenly realms. His first encounter is with a long-haired, bearded man who looks not a bit like a certain Nazarene. No prizes for any correct guesses as to what he begins to moan about, especially if you bear in mind the sudden or gradual disappearance of God in all of McKean's creation myths. The long-haired man wants his "daddy," but McKean the feline puts him right with the following words:
"I focus on a point and it changes or moves as I get nearer. It's the movement that's important, not the goal ..."
The long-haired man has an equally interesting piece of knowledge for us:
"We are bastard specks of shit."
It's another strange synthesis of art and religion, though I wouldn't take the advice on hand if I were you.
Next is a Chinaman-like figure (a bit like the man you always see in those lion dances) with the sun and the moon (yin and yang?) in tow. This individual is not clearly identifiable with any Chinese god I know. Perhaps he is Na Cha, the boy god who is beloved for his naughtiness, and who is also known as the "Grand Marshal of the Skies" and "Guardian of the Gates of Heaven." But I suggest that you take this interpretation with a huge sack of salt. He is much more likely to represent a mandarin of the art world. The essential point to take away here is McKean's disgust with people who have no interest in art apart from its decorative function and superficial pleasantness. He lays this down quite clearly in his interview with the following statement:
"I always get frustrated with people who say, 'Oh, I just do it ..."
McKean doesn't like definite answers in art either. His castigation of the very clinical and omniscient person we meet later in the chapter is meant to put an end to all such accusations. To him, art should have the complexity to sustain a range of interpretations. This is a return to the themes discussed in his creation myths where the elements of mystery and uncertainty instigate a journey of discovery and maturity.
Chapter Nine ("Chromatic Scale"). A scale where every note is equal and every note the norm; used as a roving eye over the inhabitants of a world. Profound and emotional, passionate and painful, resonant, fickle, cyclic and timeless. A mirror of our lives. To McKean, each note has meaning, a definite purpose. We can't detect the vibrations from the pieces of paper in our hands, but we're meant to understand and feel them. Notes drip across manuscript paper as the characters in our story, like musicians, improvise on each key. Only the piece they're playing isn't improvised. It's a carefully plotted and orchestrated work written with a sense of wonder. How do you describe music without killing it in the process? This is McKean's answer.
Towards the end of this chapter, Jonathan divulges all his secrets to Leo, leading to a crisis of conscience. For the time being, it is enough to note that we can take a peek into McKean's thoughts through the words of Jonathan:
"I was angry ... not at God. Jesus, I don't believe in God."
McKean isn't angry with God. Rather, like many other comic artists, he's disgusted with the concepts of "righteous justice" and "force-fed faith"; and there's a lot of anger here about religious fanaticism and hypocrisy. The source of all this is a mystery to me. Surely avoidance is the key to all their problems. Are there really that many crazies in the States or Britain? It's almost as if every comic artist has come into contact with some church corresponding to the Church in Laodicea in Revelations, a church you want to spit out. Religion has been the source of some marvelous stories by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Kazantzakis. Some of these have been heretical to the bone, but many of them do pose questions which have troubled the Christian faith. In all three cases, it was an intense knowledge of the Bible and/or theology which led to the masterpieces they created. In the comics, Chester Brown's Gnostic adaptation of the gospels is a welcome relief from the endless stream of rants, but a lack of interpretative knowledge makes these snippets extremely tedious and dull. McKean, who happens to be very "European" when it comes to formulating a story, seems to start off well, then loses his objectivity midstream. Strangely enough, the funniest (and hence most pleasing) stories I've read concerning Christianity in the comics are the Erata Stigmata shorts by the Hernandez brothers. The superstition and inventiveness which pervades these tales tickle the mind and charge the imagination. The horrible truth remains, however, that a reader in search of the best religious fodder in comics will probably be forced to write to Jack T. Chick's mail order division.
Let me touch briefly on the significance of the title of McKean's masterwork before we move on to his final words on "his world." There are a number of cages on view in the issues available. There is the vanishing scaffolding, which is considered a cage "in structure" according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In falconry, "cage" is the term used for the "frame to carry hawks upon." Even more interesting and significant is the fact that the OED lists both these usages as "obsolete." Meru is, of course, a cage for Jonathan, and I have already mentioned the cage in which Featherskill is entrapped. Angel performs on a slightly elevated stage, and this too is a definition for "cage." The attitude of specimen collection and viewing adopted by the twins seems to suggest the presence of a gigantic cage (as used in microscopy), but this is more debatable. Finally, there are the cages of the mind and of our fleshly bodies from which, notably, the cat is released. And so we move on to the final two issues of Cages.
Chapter 10 ("Fire, Star, Window, Stone") is the beginning of the end, the commencement of a two-issue epilogue rounding up the figures McKean has drawn and tinged with all the optimism of the myths created by McKean in the first issue of Cages. Pinned on a star-shaped wooden frame in Angel's room are four objects representative of Leo, Karen, Jonathan and Mrs. Featherskill. Perhaps it is astrological in nature, molding their personalities and temperaments. Perhaps a star of hope, like an existential star of Bethlehem. The obelisk in Angel's room is a symbol of their cumulative worries. It is the peak of Meru and a natural tower of despair. This transmogrification of life is an instrument upon which Angel, in his role as preserver, administers his magic with a "gentle stroke," a "small pressure" producing ripples like the whorls of a fingerprint. The perpetual night of the city is cut open with violent brushstrokes, resonating with worry lines, which, like sharp wounds carved into a copper plate and waves upon a sea of doubt, are cast upon a primordial shore, where the fire of narrative and storytelling is lit. McKean's allegory of art and artists tells of a king, who, as master of all that he surveys, decides to build a tower to make tangible his people's love, "a focus of speculation and pride." The tower (and hence art itself) is described by the poets and writers of the day as "a receiver through which we hear God's thoughts," "a human hand reaching for the stars," "an index of possibilities" and "hope." As would be expected, everything goes horribly wrong, and the monumental gift to the people becomes a bane to their existence and a focus of chaos; a vision provided to the king by some windows with a sensitivity to time (similar to those seen earlier in Cages). The tale presented by McKean is a reference to Jonathan Rush's life as a writer and the building of his tower of words and language. Within the tower are empty rooms awaiting decoration, in contrast to the perfection so painstakingly planned. This is an allegory which questions the acceptable boundaries of art and the human cost of culture. Is art worth that extra bit of human suffering and deprivation? Is a masterpiece worth more than a human life? McKean leaves these questions unanswered.
Babylonian imagery is not uncommon, and readers will note that A. S. Byatt has recently produced a book called Babeltower which concerns, among other things, an obscenity trial and the resulting furor. It is not surprising that Rush's problems and Babeltower take place in the inflammatory period of the '60s. The essential point of McKean's story is, however, quite different from that of Byatt's. As summarized in his kiss-off line and moral of the story, "shit happens," this is a story about optimism and looking at the travails of life with a degree of sanguinity. It doesn't work; shallow sentiments rarely do, however well delivered. In breaking the windows, the king is confirming the mutability of the future and his commitment to optimism.
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
James Brand Cabell
Chapter 11 ("New World"). The return of Mrs. Featherskill's husband in this chapter is something akin to Grant Morrison's sublime trick at the end of his run on Animal Man (if ever there was a title to betray the quality of a comic, this is it). But it is too cultivated and far too earnest. It is as if McKean actually believed in the essential goodness of life and man, that life is not meant simply to be endured, but to be struggled with and, eventually, conquered. It takes someone truly cynical to produce something like what Morrison did. Still, McKean's skill at counterpoint does not desert him. There are two magnificent rides in the final issue of Cages, and the first occurs in this chapter, an astrological juggling act in which the writer Jonathan Rush regains a semblance of happiness -- not meant to be described but to be savored. The resolution of Leo and Karen's fortunes in Chapter 12 ("the attic") is therefore not entirely unexpected. In the final chapter, Leo and Karen break into the art gallery, but only to look at the stars and the city and to consummate their love. It is an allegory in itself, of course, suggesting that McKean feels that art is not an end to itself. Here they encounter an Ammonite (a fossilized mollusk), a word ripe with meaning and connotations. Curved like a ram's horns, they derive their name from the horns which once adorned statues of the Greco-Egyptian god Jupiter Ammon. It is thus a representation of evolutionary divinity, which is why we see a multitude of Ammonites being flung from a universe-generating big bang later in the chapter. The word Ammonite also describes the descendents of Ben-ammi, son of Lot by one of his daughters, and thus ties in with the suggestion of Karen's abuse at the hands of her father. It also ties in with McKean's theory that creation is a "spiral" which not only "repeats but also comments on itself." Furthermore, we might see in these petrified coiled snakes a symbol for original sin and an emblem for McKean's distaste for a Christian god. Finally, on a more basic level, the evolutionist who finds a common bond with these mollusks may find in their supportive and protective exoskeletons a symbol for our own human resilience.
Which brings me to the second exceptional sequence in the final issue of Cages, a lyrical sex scene in which the figures are transfigured by their passions, and in shedding their clothes pass from darkness into light. It is a playful affirmation of the original purpose of these towers as agencies of epiphany and union. McKean erects a strange philosophy from a melding of modern science, Western thought and Eastern religion. We see their application in Karen's musings on the acceptance of death as a condition in which the gradual recognition of "cycles" and "patterns" in life brings forth a degree of "understanding" and "contentment." This has more to do with artistic ambition than religion, the desire to discern life in all its richness and fullness. This is art as a personal journey of discovery, where the translation of experience and wisdom to a wider audience is secondary. McKean further asserts this personal philosophy in Leo's acceptance that the final fruit of his labors may be "a wonderful friendship and a lousy painting." One could compare this with the king's tragic desire to make physical his love in chapter nine of Cages. In both these instances, we can see McKean's conviction that the principal manifestation of artistic purpose should be spiritual rather than selfishly and arrogantly physical and tangible. It is an idealized concept of art and life, but there is no reason why our beliefs should be so easily attained.
Cages was never really about the characters in the book, but about McKean's influences, experiences, upbringings and friends. Any reader of Cages will realize that I have merely scratched the surface of this complex work. One thing is clear to me, however. The diversity of styles, the level of ambition, the richness of thought and the inspiring execution of Cages makes it one of the most important works of comic art in the last decade.