The Motherless Oven

Description

"The Weather Clock said knife o'clock so I chained Dad up in the shed." In Scarper Lee's world, parents don't make children - children make parents. Scarper's father is his pride and joy, a wind-powered brass construction with a billowing sail. His mother is a Bakelite hairdryer. In this world it rains knives, and household appliances have souls. There are also no birthdays - only deathdays. Scarper knows he has just three weeks to live. As his deathday approaches, Scarper is forced from his routine and strikes out into the unknown - where friendships are tested and authority challenged. Unsettling and fiercely original, The Motherless Oven traces a journey through a bizarre, distorted teenage landscape: a world, after all, not so different from our own.

Rob Davis began his career self-publishing the comic SLANG. He is best known for reinventing Roy of the Rovers and for drawing Judge Dredd (Rebellion). He has written and illustrated Doctor Who (Panini) and adapted H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" for The Lovecraft Anthology Vol. 1 (SelfMadeHero). The first volume of his graphic novel adaptation of Don Quixote was shortlisted at the British Comic Awards. He is also the editor of the award-winning collaborative comic anthology Nelson.

"A graphic novel of incredible resonance and absolute, inscrutable beauty, at once a coming-of-age and coming-to-terms tale."-- "Library Journal online (Starred Review)" "Picking up the mantle of the defiant weirdness of underground comix."-- "Village Voice"