Signal to Noise

Wow, this is deep. I purchased a digital copy, it deserves a physical print. I had not expected how great this piece of work is.

This is a graphic novel, but as the intro says, that description doesn't quite do it justice. It's a beautiful combination of both art and words into something greater than the sum. The words provide context, but its the images that provides the life. The art in turn provide colours to the words, given them a deeper meaning.

It tells the tale of a dying man, diagnosed with a tumour, and how he chose to spend his remaining time. But that's just the surface. Look deeper, and it's about that man's legacy, what he leaves behind. Just like this Signal to Noise - you can take what it is on the surface, or you can look deeper - noise or signal.

It's hard to describe without spoiling things for the reader. It needs to be read, not reviewed.

I'm a pretty hard-core advocate for drinking the Gaiman Kool-Aid. Basically, if you've met me, I've recommended Gaiman to you. I just don't meet people without in some way referencing what a supremely wonderful author he is.

That said, “Signal to Noise” is much more a Dave McKean piece than a Neil piece, reading more like “Cages” than say “Sandman” or “Murder Mysteries.” There isn't really a hint of the fantastic anywhere in the story. A man learns he is dying and tries to cope with the end of the world. The film he is working on feels like the biggest Gaiman element in the piece. In other words, this is not a book I ever would have picked up from a jacket summary, which just goes to show me how little jacket summaries can be trusted.

Conceptually, the book is beautiful, interjecting randomly generated noise which I can here in my head like so many jumbled radio stations. The art is obviously McKean gorgeous, forcing even a speed reader like me to slow down and take in the expansive pictures. The themes of the book are themes that resonate with my own philosophy: the idea that there is no end of The World, but there are thousands of ends of the world every second for individual people. That's why our society is so obsessed with apocalypses. We all see our own doom looming, and we project it outward to encompass all we can grasp.

It's filled with noise, but the signal still comes through strong, the hallmark of both of these creators.

I'm so happy this book returned to print after such a long absence to give this generation (as far removed from 1989 as I feel from the Vietnam War) a chance to hear its message. In a word where apocalypse is the name of the game in media trends, this story takes a step back and thinks about what that means to a single soul, staring into the void.