Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
What may seem surreal to one, makes perfect sense in the eyes of another, and it is in this dichotomy of visual experiences that confronts the reader of Rob Davis’ The Motherless Oven, to delve further into the notion of the rationalising strange, that is what constitutes the embrace of imagination, of recognising that the extraordinary can happen.
A world where children make their parents, where hairdryers make the perfect mum and knives fall from the sky may seem to be one in which the surreal takes a sharp turn towards the absurd. However, as the story of Scarper Lee and his impending death day progresses, as the introduction of one of the great female characters in recent graphic novel history, the epitome of teenage sarcasm and intrigue in Vera Pike, gives the dystopian filled angst incredible depth, a sense of how we see the world around us and the use of the everyday object we have created as one of domestic insanity.
We have found ways to rationalise the way we construct the world around us, to use the theory of supply and demand to produce more, to own more, to see it languish away in draws and the unseen cupboards of the nation’s homes. It is in a way the same rationale in which we see each generation replace their natural parents with what they see as more natural heroes, the fixation on the hardware placed in front of them rather than developing a relationship with the ones who brought them into the world.
What Rob Davis does so well in this fascinating trip to into the surreal is to make the story seem so ordinary, the strange enveloped by the normal and wrapped in the clothes of the accustomed; only betraying the signal of the unreal when the reader consciously remembers that what passes for normal is in fact dangerously exciting, that the more advanced in age and the young are really the only ones to be seen, that there is no reconciliation with the middle-aged, the ones in between these two states of being.
It is in this that the memory of films such as Logan’s Run come to the reader, of how a young generation deals with their gods and idols when there is no older influence to guide them, to teach, to do anything but spend time.
The 2014 graphic novel may have been missed by many when it was first unleashed, but as the reader explores the world of falling knives from the sky, of mechanical invention taking the symbolism of the confessor, and the presence of pre-determined death days, what is clear is that the surreal is actually more in keeping with our own times that we care to believe. A fascinating look at the nature of invention, The Motherless Oven is arguably one of the most unique graphic novels of the 21st Century.
Rob Davis’ The Motherless Oven is published by Selfmadehero.
Ian D. Hall