Oscar

When Oscar Wilde reappears in Reading Gaol exactly a century after his initial imprisonment in 1895, the event is greeted with disbelief, then denial - not least by Wilde himself. Among prison staff and the judiciary, press and government, bewilderment turns to panic. With truly Wildean wit, Dan Pearce revels in a technology and attitudes much changed over a century or so, while people and their mores remain rooted in self-interest. In fact, those most willing to accept the regenerated Wilde on his own terms are his new cell mates, while the great and the good search in vain for political expedients, unable to face down the moral dilemma of a resurrected Oscar Wilde. Pearce gives us a cavalcade of characters: the prison psychiatrist, the prison governor's wife, an art therapist, hardened and softened criminals, and more. Dan Pearce's facility with the medium of cartoon and his penchant for lampooning are reminiscent of Robert Crumb, Thomas Rowlandson and William Hogarth, though with an illustrative style purely his own. It need not be stressed that continuity in the comics genre operates on a different basis from that of any other art form. To that end, with Pearce, complex and hyper-creative layouts are jettisoned in favour of straightforward storytelling, with a visual syntax unflaggingly hitting the mark.