Pick Up The Squirrel Machine Designed By Hans Rickheit Digital Copy

think the backcover synopsis is quite accurate, This book is "exquisitely rendered, strange, and hauntingly beautiful", The author is quite accurate described as an "obscurantist" cartoonist,

There's not really much anyone can say about this comic, I don't think,

The relationships between the two brothers and the mother could have been better developed, but they do take a backseat to the mysterious places the boys explore in their vast mansion, and the strange devices and art they create.


This book has a childish in a good way imagination in its explorations mixed with a cynical and Lovecraftian proclivity, I would love for the author to do another volume similar to this but more suitable for kids as I would have loved to have read a book like this as a child.
I was more interested with the abstract architecture and technology than with his abstract flesh mutilation,

This is my first book by Rickheit and I quickly picked up another, Probably the only book you'll ever read featuring an organ customized to work with decapitated pig heads instead of pipes, The Squirrel Machine is a graphic novel exercise in synthetic fetishization and psychosexual abstraction.
Rickheit crisply draws the story of two scientific wunderkind brothers who create bizarre musical inventions utilizing the bodies of various farm animals, But their poor, little world is about to take a deviant nosedive when young love enters the picture and a secret, labyrinthine structure is discovered beneath their house.
Like Un Chien Andalou and Eraserhead, yer fucked if you think a coherent story or a set interpretation can be divined from what abstractions are presented before you, but go ahead and whip out the closest copy of Freud you got on hand and start psychoanalyzing! What I liked most was Rickheit's use of steampunk aesthetics as a means of crafting disturbing sexual imagery, as opposed to just an excuse for having characters wear top hats and engineer boots while riding around in zeppelins.
The Squirrel Machine is certainly a unique approach to sludging through the subconscious, Makes a great gift for any occasion, THE SQUIRREL MACHINE erzählt in schwarzweiß Bildern die Geschichte der Brüder Edmund und William Torpor, die im New England des, Jahrhunderts wundersame wissenschaftliche Forschungsprojekte betreiben und technisch modifizierte Tierkadaver als Musikinstrumente einsetzen,
Die Bilder

sind beunruhigend, die Geschichte ein phantasmagorischer Fiebertraum, den Guy Maddin oder David Lynch auf der Leinwand träumen könnten, und neben der Phantastik die SteampunkElemente enthält haben auch Ekel und Sexualität ihren Raum.
Eine Faszination des Grauens, die mich als Leser kräftig durchgeschüttelt hat, mal mit holzschnittartigen, sehr übersichtlichen Panels, mal mit Wimmelbildern, die man sich lange anschauen kann, ohne sie zu druchdringen.




Und es liegt wohl auch gar nicht in der Absicht von Hans Rickheit, dass der Leser THE SQUIRREL MACHINE liest, versteht und zufrieden beiseite packt.
Das Buch ist verstörend und wird den Leser, wenn er kein dickes Fell hat, in eben diesem Zustand zurück lassen,
Bizarre and nightmarish for me, Maybe I just didn't understand what he was trying to do but I just found the story and artwork to be offensive and disturbing.
Two brothers with gifts for invention turn their skills to making instruments out of animal carcasses, Definitely not a graphic novel for teens or me either it would seem, Þetta er ótrúlega flott bók, svarthvít highcontrast draumsýn um yfirþyrmandi mekanisma og árekstur eða samruna við oftar en ekki gróteskan lífsmassa, og saga af tveimur bræðrum, samstarfi, áflogum og einhverskonar endalokum.


Það er kúnst að fylla síðurnar af öllum þessum smáatriðum og allri þessari sviðsmynd en undirstrika samt aðalatriðin, án þess að nota liti eða nokkurskonar skyggingu.
Og að leiða söguna örugglega áfram þrátt fyrir allan þennan massa sem bókstaflega fyllir annarsvegar hús bræðranna og skóginn í kring.
Svarthvíta stemningin er drungaleg, þrúgandi og skýr, Þetta er svakalega vel gert,

Ég hef aldrei heyrt minnst á bókina né höfundinn áður, sem mér þykir skrýtið en skemmtilegt því núna get ég leitað uppi aðrar bækur eftir hann.
Delightfully strange and surreal. Definitely warrants two reads. At the end of the book, I knew that I enjoyed the book and also wondered what the hell just happened, Going back through the book, I found that it was easier to understand the story in its individual chapters first, then try to weave them together as a larger work.


The illustrations are wonderful, The characters visually stand out really well in each scene, and a lot of the subtle characterizations are accomplished through the drawings,
An anachronistic parable for the convulsive elite, What is the squirrel machine Is it a rodent ensnarement device A mechanism for concealing ones guarded harvest An anachronistic fable A meaningless diversion

Set in a fictionalth Century New England town, the narrative initially details the relationship and maturation of Edmund and William Torpor.
But the two brothers quickly elicit the scorn and recrimination of an unamused public when they reveal their musical creations built from strange technologies and scavenged animal carcasses.
Driven to seek a concealment for their aberrant activities, they make a startling discovery, Perhaps they will divine the mystery of the squirrel machine,

What is The Squirrel Machine An immutably strange and haunting narrative that transcends known logics and presumptive dreambarriers A distillation of subconscious beauty and inspired madness A dangerous object for the incautious A revelation for the undernourished cryptoseeker The virgin caress of unconsummated apocalypse The unspeakable thing that you always knew.
Its also the longest and most ambitious graphic novel by legendary obscurantist cartoonist Hans Rickheit,pages of exquisitely rendered pictorial narrative, Meticulous, strange, and hauntingly beautiful, this enigmatic work will ensure the inquisitive reader a spleenful of cerebral serenity that will take exposure to vast quantities of mediocrity to dispel.
bampw illustrations. The Squirrel Machine is my first fulllength Rickheit piece, I met him randomly at an art and signing event at a comic book store, After a quick sketch and chat with my kids, I bought a handful of his work for sale and really enjoyed the steampunk whimsy of his oldtime science fiction worlds.
Really engaging and striking art, Rickheits story is about two brothers who live amidst a labarynthine underground world where they must build and invent machines and musical instruments, usually using the minds, organs, voices, and heads to power and operate the macabre machinery.
Beyond that, this is really difficult to explain but wildly inventive with gorgeous art, I have been following online as he adds more and more to his stories at least Squirrel Machine and The Gloaming continue online, . . much of his art beyond Squirrel Machine have additional erotic and violent motifs, Still a wild ride and a great intro to the work he does, Will continue to read his stuff enthusiastically hard to describe but entirely, strangely captivating and entertaining, Bullet :

WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF

WHAT IS THE POINT OF LIFE! winner best
gross out dream
this month
hands down

Whilst I loved the art, surrealism and strangeness of this book, I feel that it lacked meaning.

I'm a big fan of the bizarre and surreal but usually there is meaning behind it, as with cinema, art and comics it usually acts as a visual metaphor or puzzle to be pieced together in your mind, but a lot of this seems to be weirdness for the sake of it.
It seems like Hans Rickheit came up with this beautiful imagery and then tried to apply a story to it, I liked this book but I don't think it'll be one I'll reread, This is pretty amazing. Look at my descriptors. You can call this an art comic, with elements of horror and steam punk and surrealism/dream logic, Creepy and funny and strange and wonderful, all at once, Great meticulous drawing, with sort of sloppily lettered dialogue, which was disconcerting for me,

Set in nineteenth century New England, the story is of Edmund and William Torpor who make musical music from instruments partly technological and dead animals! Creep and strange horror/steampunk mashup, I'd say.
Has in spite of everything a kind of Victorian feel to the narrative, such as it is, The point isn't plot, though it's mystery and imagination, Poe territory, And Al Columbia and Jim Woodring and fantasy horror psychedelia nostalgia,

Rickheit also did Cochlea amp Eustachia, and The Consequences of Folly, which are also strange, foregoing traditional plot, character, any of that.
Dream stuff, Freudian at times, tinged with horror erotica in some strange way, all of his work, So interesting. Creepy, disturbing and grotesque.
Right up to the end, I had no clue what was going on,
Many times I felt like throwing up after witnessing images that can't be unseen,
Images that will surely give me nightmares for weeks to come,
Was that young girl kidnapped, raped and chopped into pieces
Ugh, . . Beautifully strange and strangely beautiful,
The first work I've read by Rickheit,
A truly unique voice with incredibly strong and imaginative artwork,

I could walk endlessly through those interior shots of the laboratory if that's what we can call it,

As much dream logic as narrative, where you know you've experienced something but on awakening you're not quite sure what exactly that was and it's quickly slipping through your fingers anyway I'm all for the disturbing and surreal, but I really have no idea what this one was trying to say.
Nice art, though. Unapologetically weird but beautifully illustrated, this story involves two brothers who seemed obsessed with creating weird musical machines out of animals and other living things.
It's surreal and even a little funny in its overthetop images kinda like the way that new horror flick The Human Centipede looks, One of the things I really liked about this though was the fact that Rickheit delivers all this weirdness without feeling the need to explain it.
You step into his world and you have to figure it out, The Squirrel Machinestars

Two brothers build strange musical instruments out of dead animal carcasses, The pictures in this graphic novel is beyond what you could imagine, A Very Bizarre Steampunk as the two brothers try to unravel the mystery behind the "squirrel machine, "

Despite the black and white pictures which once again makes me want to pull out my crayons, I was mesmerized as I looked on at this obscurantist cartoonist work the one and only Hans Rickheit, It would be really nice if, considering that I introduced him to the wide wonderful world of sequential art, that Zack wasn't the one that suggested all of my favorite graphic novels of the last two years.


This was the most disconcerting, bizarre, and wonderful graphic novel I've read since The Aviary, And like The Aviary it was equally as irreverent, nonsensical, and almost impossible to fully deconstruct,

The Squirrel Machine is like traveling through the nightmares of a supremely talented psychopath, I'm also partial to illustrations entirely in black and white,

Additionally, I'll never look at pigs the same again, Or, in that theme, musical instruments, well. . that was weird. This is completely amazing. Never has the nightmarish grotesque been rendered with such perfect beauty of lines and form, or with such poetically suggestive and graceful storytelling, Rickheit manages to push into a heightened onereic madness triangulated by surrealism, psychedelia, and a kind of Crononbergian antiquarian bad science, but, importantly, works it very effectively into a believable, relateable context built of mundane quotedian and psychological details that elevates what some take for finelywrought but disjointed disturbing imagery into something that for me, was totally tragic and moving.
And supposedly this is an attempt to render some kind of autobiographical truth, which really ups the pathos, may no one ever be devoured by my subconcious, please,

The story is basically a turnofthecentury coming of age drama about two outsider genius brothers building unusual musical instruments from the, uh, materials at hand.
Their art later gets entangled with the demands of adolescence and family in increasingly complicated and unclear ways, And things get weird. Think bits of a hybridized Jim Woodring and Hans Bellmer terrordesire invading everyday reality, and then let the story get dark, dark, dark, and totally unsettling even my jaded conceptions, at times.
The crux of this story's un/reality is a tricky concept to disect, but I'll offer a few possibilities: Edmund, the elder brother, seems like he may be more directly in touch with his subconscious than most, than is healthy, to the point that it may be manifesting beneath the family home and between the walls.
Or maybe it's more like a collective id between the brothers, The collective unconscious Or could it be the repressed urges of their longdead father, still buried after all these years Or his workshop Or something that even he did not know about, something primal and arcane, there long before he built the house.
If you're the kind of surrealist/symbolist reader that I am, the lack of easy explanation, allowing this multiplication of potential meanings instead of textbook allegorizing, is not a failure, but a clear asset.


Artwise, this is meticulous and ornate, capturing unbelievable constructions with an unmatched literal clarity, The result works in a manner similar to how Poe's extensive detail helps suspend disbelief in his gothic fantastic, perhaps, And Rickheit is so good a rendering eerie architectural detail that I feel like it's gonna look like I was copying him very badly in my own recent comics attempts.


Though I'm not sure that the last act entirely works for me, I think I see how it fits into the greater whole, and acts two and three deliver much of the emotional payoff otherwise denied by the last, I think.
So on the whole, this is brilliant, fantastic stuff, Rickheit is one of the best and most original comic constructors out there right now, and I seriously hope that this masterful work, and his new collection via Fantagraphics early next year, can help push him into a level of recognition that will allow him devote more time to these incredible projects.


Postscript: I retrospectively docked this one star because while it plays to all of my biases surrealist horror, architectural insanity, the things between the walls of ordinary life and home, the subconcious maybe the same thing as the last entry, precision linework, weird sublimated experience, I'm not sure if the narrative development is fully articulated here.
Not that it needs to be all obvious or explicit, but I'm not sure the underpinnings are entirely in place, which is more important.
Further thought, rereading needed, obviously, And it's exceptional either way, .