Title: Cinema Panopticum Author: Thomas Ott Publisher: Fantagraphics Publish Date: 2005 Pages: 102 Genres:: Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction, Film & Arts, Film Studies Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

Cinema Panopticum, written and illustrated by Thomas Ott, is a graphically told series of wordless stories and is everything the 1980s Tom Hanks feel-good kid at a carnival movie Big should've been.

Ott, a product of Switzerland, had not produced any graphic novel work in nearly a decade as he attended film school and played in a band. However, his art has been shown in major museums during that time and the pictures produced in Cinema Panopticum are evidence that his use of the scratchboard technique--a technique involving scratching out a picture from a black surface and uncovering the white underneath it--remains stunningly effective in telling his efficient and entertaining tales.

A preteen girl's visit to the carnival is the center piece of Cinema Panopticum. With a pocket full of change, she begins eager and gleeful, but soon finds out she doesn’t have enough money to play any games of chance and she’s too young to ride the ride and becomes disappointed and sad. In this state, she walks through the carnival until she discovers five machines, hidden in a tent, in which to spend her coins.

Haunting tales are seen one at a time by the plain-looking girl in pigtails through the machines. She pops change into one machine after another, all bearing the name of the story on their façade, and watches as the gore and fright unfold before her wide eyes. The stories often end in with tragedy, death or destruction and with the little girl wearing a combination of the coy smile of curiosity and someone who witnessed death. She is drawn to the next machine, to witness the next entertaining story of carnage and heart break.

The tales are steep in range of emotion and Ott twists plots and characters, like those of real life. One minute he has them believing they are okay, life is just; then, suddenly, an act happens and they realize they are the unluckiest people on in the world. The depth of the maddening pain in their stories evoked memories of when father drank too many beers, woke you from dreams and made you watch back-to-back episodes of The Twilight Zone before sending you back to bed, forever changed.

Each picture is a work of art with the details telling the tale, leaving words unneeded. Lines of the scratchboard pull the reader into each frame in a mesmerizing style. The story titled "The Hotel" has frames with strokes that make the texture of the walls come alive with a moving skin-like appearance, enhancing the foreboding mood. And the young girl's face has the feel that it may just slide off of its skull as she looks down into the machine in another frame.

Ott's work is marvelous and powerfully fun material to look at. He creates stories that are involved and creepy and stick in the mind a long time after the pages have been closed and the book has been locked in the trunk, in the garage, of your neighbor's house. The unforgettable stories are told by the deep characters in a few short pages. In fact, the only negative is that, like a slice of your favorite pie or a good scare, the book is over too quickly. A recommended read? Yes. Certainly. How to justify spending $19 on something that is over quicker than a $3.50 ride at a carnival? Put it in your bathroom and read it over and over.