A SMALL KILLING
Alan Moore &
Oscar Zarate
Avatar Press
A Small Killing, by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate, is a curious cultural relic. The first in Victor Gollancz’s aborted graphic novel line, ASK was originally published in 1991, and set in 1989. It does have that sort of end-of-the-Eighties British feel about it, too, where we were just getting rid of a lot of the clutter. We had gotten over the novelty of the fourth TV channel, and we could see that Thatcherism was collapsing under its own weight. Mostly, though, I think we were just eager to be that step closer to the Millennium. The sense that something New was in the offing was overpowering.
Around the time ASK was released( I was 16), I was reading a lot fewer comics than I am now. I’m pretty sure I was reading things like 2000AD, Deadline, probably Crisis (the British political offshoot of 2000AD), and Marvel’s mature readers anthologies. And Spider-Man, of course. ASK fits neatly into that more mature category.
Ostensibly the story of an advertising executive who returns to his hometown in Yorkshire, haunted by the eerily familiar face of a schoolboy who follows him everywhere, A Small Killing is really about innocence lost. About how we take small steps on the road to Hell. And ultimately, it’s about how you can go home again.
More than that, I’m keeping to myself. Away out and buy the book.
While this isn’t the very best thing that Alan Moore has ever written – and, if you consider that it’s still really rather good, you can guess what I think about Moore’s other work – A Small Killing is a fascinating study of the effect that guilt has on a person. Not misplaced guilt (see, for wont of a better example, Batman) or Catholic guilt (e.g.: Spider-Man), but real, honest-to-goodness, “I done a baaad thing” guilt.
Moore understands that guilt can be like a cancer, gnawing away at the soul, colouring your every thought and deed. A Small Killing shows how a life of doing the wrong thing here, making the wrong decision there, of taking the easy way out, can take a high psychological toll.
Moore’s story is insightful, suitably introspective without being an exercise in navelgazing, and when it has to be, unflinchingly horrific. The story is strictly a one-character affair, and Timothy Hole – think Harry Potter, aged 35, after he dumps his stupid mates, knocks up Hermione and leaves her for Sophie Ellis-Bextor – is laid bare for the reader to see. What we can all agree on is that Tim is a mess.
What I doubt we can agree on is whether we would all see something of ourselves in Tim.
Zarate’s art is a testament to the power of hand-coloured, pre-computer comics. It’s a lavish piece of work, utilizing a lot of different tools, from charcoals to watercolours to “traditional” pencil-and-inks. The storytelling is great: Tim’s emotions are right on the surface, no matter how hard he tries to hold them in. There are a couple of stop-you-dead moments which are just sublime. The best of these is when Tim gets caught in the middle of a yob riot. It’s a terrible snapshot of time, and considering that the Poll Tax Riots were still fresh in our memory, all-too-raw: the sharpness of elbows and knuckles and boots coming up against the round hardness of the Riot Police. And somewhere in the middle of all of this is Tim, looking like a Yuppie Where’s Wally.
The best money I’ve spent on comics in ages, A Small Killing is a truly adult graphic novel. A kid probably wouldn’t have the life experience to really get what Moore and Zarate are trying to put across here. Oh, they might understand it, intellectually. But they might not feel that pang of recognition.
An adult, however - even a relatively young one, like Timothy Hole - may see something in A Small Killing to make them think. What little psychological timebombs wait for me, down the road?
There's no such thing as "no regrets."
Review Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published on the comics culture website Gray Haven Magazine