Scott McCloud is best known as comics’ most accessible, smartest theorist, thanks to his 1994 classic Understanding Comics. But the other McCloud, of superhero comics like ZOT! is equally beloved by the cognoscenti. With The Sculptor,
McCloud reminds us that he is one of the field’s great storytellers,
with a story of love, art, madness and death that wrenches, delights and
confounds.
David Smith is a sculptor who almost made it: he moved to New York,
found a wealthy patron, began flying high — then crashed and burned
after his patron destroyed his reputation and career in retaliation for a
blunt, even cruel interview with an arts newspaper. Now Smith is barely
hanging on by his fingertips, about to lose his apartment, out of
money, and about to break the promises he made to himself — and his
dead father — no make a name for himself, without taking any handouts,
in New York City, or die trying.
That’s when David runs into his beloved uncle, who joins him at a table
at the diner where he’s drowning his sorrows and gives him the
sketchbook he’d kept as a small boy, a sketchbook David could swear he
burned years ago — and as he pages through it in delight, he realizes
that the last time he saw his uncle was…at his uncle’s funeral.
In fact, David’s not eating with his uncle. He’s eating with a walking
avatar of death, and death has a bargain for him. David will be able to
sculpt the pieces he has lurking in his soul, to become known and make
his mark, but in 200 days, death will come for him.
This is the setup for The Sculptor,
and the 200 days provide a tense countdown to a ticking bomb, driving
the story at a pace that never slows down to anything less than a dead
run.
But the speed is just the engine driving The Sculptor and what’s really interesting is the freight that it pulls.
Because this is a book that is a look at the paradoxical drives that
make us want to create and how it relates to love. David’s desire to
make art is uncompromising, selfish, wonderful, and totally destructive.
The art he makes is both a gift to those he loves and a thing he takes
from them, because even when he meets his heart’s true love, his need
for artistic posterity rivals his ardor for the love of his life.
This is a book full of warm, complicated, difficult relationships, full
of drive and vision, full of brutal honesty and difficult choices.
