From the Publisher
Neil Gaiman is an acclaimed novelist and writer of comics, short stories, screen and teleplays. He wrote all 75 issues of DC's groundbreaking Sandman series, an epic meditation on myths and storytelling. His other comics work includes Books of Magic, Death, Signal to Noise, and Mr. Punch. He created the BBC's hit television series Neverwhere, soon to be a major motion picture.
With the publication of the best-selling Neverwhere novel, Gaiman made the leap from graphic visionary to literary novelist. His other books include Smoke and Mirrors, Stardust, and Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. In 1999, he wrote the English-language script for the anime blockbuster Princess Mononoke and returned to Sandman with the new graphic novel The Dreamhunters. He received the 1997 Defender of Liberty Award from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for his constant support of free expression in comics. The Dictionary of Literary Biography lists him along with Thomas Pynchon and William S. Burroughs as one of America's "top ten post-modern writers." Gaiman welcomed Spring, 2001 with the much heralded release of his XXth novel, American Gods.
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Neil Gaiman lives up to the reputation as master storyteller he gained with SANDMAN. Like that ground-breaking work, STARDUST is for those who are looking for an honest-to-reality fantasy but not for those who are looking for a censored fairy tale that takes place in a perfect world.

Mr. Punch is a difficult piece to review. It may be Neil Gaiman's finest work, but it is certainly his darkest. It is hard to describe the plot of Mr. Punch without giving anything away; suffice to say it is not the kind of work you would expect in a comic, and not what you would simply be able to put down and go on with your life once you have finished.

Dave McKean's always innovative artwork enhances the nightmarish quality of the piece, and Neil Gaiman's prose is captivating as always. Mr. Punch is at the very least worth a read, and will likely find itself on your bookshelf next to all the other books that quietly changed the way you look at things. 

Neil Gaiman crafts a superb and remarkably arresting story out of a young boy's experiences with his shady family members set against the backdrop of a deceptively harmless Punch & Judy show. Gaiman, as well as McKean's excellent visuals capture that elusive feeling of being small, wide-eyed in wonder amidst sinister laughter from half-closed doors and such.

Mr. Punch is one of those rare graphic novels that transcends the "fat comic book" and truly explores the possibilities of the medium. The text and illustrations are bound together and support each other, yang and yin, dreams and nightmares, innocence and experience. Dave McKean's illustrations are not only great comic art, they're great fine art, complex, rich, powerful individually but devastating in sequence, and perfectly complement Neil Gaiman's spare, almost naive text.

The artwork is in the mood of looking through an old attic closet in the neighborhood's junk dealers house after he dies. It has the feeling of touching a piece of the past that you may or may not have ever been in contact with. The story is as innocent as a child and as guilty as a scary clown.