Review by Frank Plowright
Where to start? Probably by noting that the unique mix of delicately intelligent art, often surreal horror and absurdist journeys packed with ridiculous obstructions is like nothing else seen in comics other than Hans Rickheit’s Cochlea & Eustachia Volume 1. Well, maybe Jim Woodring occupies the same territory, but with a more innocent approach (see recommendations).
The first volume introduced the pair of barely clothed young women navigating their way around what seemed a vast antique warehouse also storing Heath Robinson style contraptions and creatures who’d been victims of surgical experiments. While it’s good, so reading it is desirable, there’s no need to have done so to dive in here.
Volume 2 is more of the same, except Cochlea and Eustachia are now just two among many similar slim masked young women equally tested as they wander through a maze-like world that’s apparently housed within the head of a man in a raincoat with doglike features. Does Rickheit possesses doglike features? It seems a very literal introduction to a graphic novel so dependent on his prodigious visual imagination.
Assorted girls meander, crawl, tumble or are pulled from one precarious situation to the next, doing their best to avoid a mean-spirited homunculus with sharp teeth sucking them into machinery. The unfortunate few drop directly into the mouth of a humanoid frog in a suit without trousers. However, it can equally be the case that one girl consumes or gives birth to another. It all takes place in an environment bizarre and terrifying by our standards, stitched together by mixing the industrial with the baroque, the impenetrable with the insubstantial and wildlife with woodwork. The result is some unholy amalgamation of Hieronymus Bosch, Victor Frankenstein, Rube Goldberg and Friedenreich Hundertwasser.
Rickheit is an astonishing artist in every respect. He’s technically accomplished, knows how to guide readers through a story, draws the attractive alongside the demented and his imagination knows no bounds. Why isn’t work of this quality more widely recognised?
That could be because naked women are a speciality, although that’s not a condition exclusive to them. They’re slim and young, and drawn as such. Given they’re constantly moving, sometimes crawling through pipework and sometimes trapped in fiendish devices there’s a fetishistic element, far more so than the first volume, which means some might find the content objectionable. Perhaps the best solution is they stay well clear.
By turns funny and horrific, Cochlea and Eustachia Volume 2 is plot light and concept heavy, and an amazing journey. This is only available via Rickheit’s own website.
