![]() ![]() We don't know it yet, but this unsettling bit of verse will serve as Collins' mission statement, and the book's thematic overture. We push in closer and closer, over tidy rows of identical houses until we find Dave, an exemplary member of Here's neat and orderly community, where every lawn is mowed, every meeting is on time, and every chin is beardless. We see the mythical island of Here, upon which the action of the story will take place, and surrounding it, the vast, terrifying and unknowable darkness of a place called There, seething with a malevolent threat that looms over Collins' tale. It's a good deal less assertive than the book's unforgettable opening text, which reveals itself amid a series of establishing panels. And as we've done so many times on our way through Collins' sardonic fable of conformity and chaos, we pause our reading to drink it in. The book's absurdist narrative climax has come and gone, and in the quiet that descends in its wake we readers sail on, blithely navigating the glass-calm waters of dénouement until we strike that tiny, astonishing parenthetical. That statement comes as a seeming afterthought, tossed off at the bottom of the page toward the end of Stephen Collins' slyly exquisite graphic novel The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil Author Stephen Collins ![]()
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