The Werewolf at Dusk: And Other Stories

Long celebrated as a modern master of graphic literature, David Small has elicited in his work comparisons to Stan Lee and even Alfred Hitchcock. His internationally acclaimed graphic memoir, Stitches, told the story of a childhood in disarray. Werewolf at Dusk, appearing nearly fifteen years later, turned its attention to the twilight of life and to aging, gracefully or otherwise. The three stories in this collection are linked by the dread of things internal. In the title story, an adaptation of Lincoln Michel's classic short piece, the dread is that of a man who has reached senility with something repellant in his nature. The specter of old age also haunts the semiautobiographical story "A Walk in the Old City." Brain matter cascades and spiders loom as a psychoanalyst, self-assured in his practice, wanders along empty streets, reality warping into the irrational with the insouciance of a dream. In the final story, a reinterpretation of Jean Ferry's "The Tiger in Vogue," this dreamscape gives way to the ominous environs of Berlin in the 1920s.