The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott

Without words, Ott artistically and expertly conveys feelings and clearly distinguishes every action. His art has a warmth and depth of detail that forebears Masereel and Ward sometimes lacked. Ott employs a scratchboard process, a technique that uses sharp knives for etching into a thin layer of white china clay coated with black india ink (as opposed to the more labor-intensive woodcut method, where images are actually carved into a block of wood). Alas, all this fortune does not last, as the story veers off into surprisingly fantastical and creepy territory. Previously a poor, lonely man, he soon comes into money, romance, and happiness, perhaps for the first time. As he follows the seemingly random numbers, the guard's luck begins to change. The guard begins to see the numbers cropping up in his life (a clock, a phone number, cards, and even a dog's markings). Following an execution, a prison guard finds a piece of paper with a sequence of numbers (the title's 753-6-96-8) left behind by the dead prisoner. The creator of numerous short graphical stories, collected in Cinema Panopticum, Greetings From Hellville, and Dead End, Ott relates here a powerful, Twilight Zone-styled tale of a series of numbers that grants desires to those who decipher the pattern. The Swiss artist Thomas Ott employs a similar style in his first novel-length work, The Number 753-6-96-8. In the 1920s and 1930s, artists such as Frans Masereel ( The Idea) and Lynd Ward ( Gods' Man) used woodcuts to produce popular wordless novels which would go on to influence generations of illustrators.

Still, one of my favourite graphic novelist. The build-up of the mystery in the first part points to something even more disturbing, and often the ending is a little less then expected. It does not ruin the enjoyment of the story, but it feel a little anticlimactic. The only flaw I can find in his graphic novels (and also with this one) is a certain predictability.

If you are new to Thomass Ott, I don't recommend starting with this volume, I would suggest the short story collections, which I also found more interesting.

The dialogues are built with the character's eyes, the plot with their most hidden thoughts, and the inevitable end without escape. Without words, the story goes on entirely in the mind of the characters, in which we find ourselves trapped, victims of their same horrors. The author uses his signature black and white scratched style, creating an unsettling atmosphere where light is defined with its negative, as a temporary absence of darkness. A silent horror, a graphic novel about numbers, darkness and obsession.

The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott