Introduction to the Dutch Edition of The Spiral Cage
Dear reader. You are in for a unique experience.
I first met Al Davison and read through The Spiral Cage about twenty-five years ago. It was unique then and it still is today. The version Al showed me was a work-in-progress, a folder of relentlessly experimental and uncompromisingly personal sequential art that was at once poignant, shocking, funny and uplifting. I was amazed. It was a truly groundbreaking piece of comic storytelling that went on to become the first British autobiographical “graphic novel”. It amuses me that there is now the marketing term “non-fiction graphic novel” to describe autobiography and reportage, genres that are patently not novels at all. When Al created The Spiral Cage the comic autobiography genre as such didn’t exist.
When the first edition was published by Renegade Press in 1988 I could read it properly for the first time and it was everything I’d remembered and more. This is what comic albums should be like. They should be as adult, as rich, involving and rewarding as prose books. This seems pretty obvious to readers in the present day but before the graphic novel revolution, in an Anglo-American milieu dominated by bland superhero fare aimed mainly at adolescents, it was an extremely recent concept.
Clearly The Spiral Cage is not unique just because it is autobiography. Though one of the first, proceeded by Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, Harvey Pekar’s work and, to some extent Art Spiegelman’s Maus, it has been followed in recent years by a torrent of life stories in comic form, from harrowing trauma to lightweight tales of first love.
No, The Spiral Cage is unique because, quite simply, so is Al Davison. His story you are about to begin so I won’t act as a spoiler. What is not mentioned in here though is that Al holds black belts in both Kung-Fu & Karate and has won several martial arts tournaments. He is a theatrical choreographer, set designer and film maker. He teaches drawing skills and storytelling techniques. He performs a Spiral Cage one-man show. He’s worked in the comic industry for over twenty years, creating his own graphic novels and writing and drawing for DC Vertigo and others and is currently drawing the new Doctor Who comic – in a way coming full circle from a scene in this book where he watches the show as a child.
He’s also working on Scar Tissue, a sequel to The Spiral Cage, continuing his story and delving deeper into his past. But, for now, prepare to enter a singular world of brutal honesty, laugh-out-loud humour, astounding images and single-minded determination as Al Davison battles to forge his own destiny against frightening odds.
Bryan Talbot
Sunderland May 2009