Review by Frank Plowright

Aspects of Joseph Merrick’s late 19^th century life have been well documented, most famously in David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man. However it’s just one interpretation, as many gaps remain unfilled, the most prominent being an actual definition of the medical condition causing the unsightly growths Merrick endured his entire life. The memoirs of Dr Frederick Treves detailing conversations and treatment provide the greatest source of information about Merrick’s life, but the Treves presented by Tom Ward is far from the kindly practitioner only interested in helping Merrick.

It’s just one aspect of an intelligent reconsideration in fictional form of the grim cards Merrick was dealt in life. Ward incorporates myths such as Merrick’s mother being frightened by a carnival elephant just before giving birth, facts such as his desperate early life and fiction fitted around it. That Luke Parker’s art is so strongly influenced by Mike Mignola is a signpost to the fictional additions, which are primarily of the supernatural variety

Via the use of dark flat colour tones and gothic standbys such as flashes of lightning, Parker imbues late 19^th century London with a suitably creepy and foreboding atmosphere. As with Mignola, this is very dependent on shadow. There’s a blocky, stark quality to the people, largely confined to London’s upper classes, with the controlled stiffness of the era apparent. Parker begins well, and becomes a more composed artist over the four chapters.

There’s a reason the adjective ‘Sensational’ is part of the title, since Ward has Merrick as a man of action in places, supplying a lurid pulp quality without falling into the easy trap of making that the focus. Merrick is very sympathetic as someone smart enough to recognise his limitations within a judgemental society and understandably angry about it at times. Celebrities of the era put in appearances, the fictional alongside the then living, but in passing rather than intrusively usurping the narrative, with a nicely designed version of a familiar character introduced to take us into Volume Two.

The Sensational Elephantman is an astonishingly strong first graphic novel, so poised and confident in presenting an enclosed world that you’d assume it was the creation of industry veterans.

This is available via Amazon, but why not support independent creativity by buying directly from Ward and Parker at their website.