Dave McKean's heads are getting bigger

At first glance, Raptor: A Sokól graphic novel is a very Dave McKean book. It piles on the symbolism with a heavy use of multi-media montage to create otherworldly haunting images. It's a story of lost realms and the lost souls who roam through them, so it's pretty much business as usual for the artist.

But it also has some weird textured caricature to his faces that hasn't always been there in his art before, and it's a disturbing delight. The faces on the characters in many of his previous comic works have been abstract splashes, or hard and connected brows and noses on pale, flat heads.

And in Raptor, the people in the 'real world' section of the book looks more in the tradition of Mad Magazines' best character artists. In this mythical shadowland of his book, there are figures out of a Mort Drucker or Jack Davis strip - big heavy noses and ears, weathered features on heads just a tiny bit too big for their bodies. Distinctive creatures with enough shade and texture to come alive, wondering what it's all about with ponderous emotions.

It's a gorgeously unsettling effect and keeps the whole book from getting too heavy. Which means it's maybe not a very Dave McKean book at all, and all the better for it.